bull in a china shop

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a person who is clumsy, reckless, or destructively forceful in a delicate situation that requires care, tact, and precision; the image of a powerful animal blundering through a shop filled with fragile porcelain captures the disproportion between the actor's force and the environment's fragility; the phrase is used to criticise heavy-handed interventions in diplomacy, management, or personal relationships where a more sensitive approach was needed and where the damage inflicted by bluntness cannot easily be undone