汉英词典
Chinese-English Dictionary
MEANING OF 半桶水
半桶水
(coll.) (of one's skills, knowledge etc) limited / superficial / half-baked / sb with a smattering of knowledge (of sth) / dabbler
bàn tǒng shuǐ
EXAMPLE SENTENCES

这帮受过点教育的半桶水失败者们中,最可恶的是那些抱怨名词做动词用的人。

The worst of this sorry bunch of semi-educated losers are those who seem to glory in being irritated by nouns becoming verbs.

这是个决定性时候当你擅长的事情发挥作用了-然而如果你只是半桶水,你就应该让其他人帮你去完成。

It's a time when you need to decide what you're good at – and if you're only half good at something, you should probably let other people do it.

但快回到家的时候,破桶又感到难过了,因为他又漏掉了半桶水,他只好再一次为自己的过失向挑水工道歉。

But at the end of the walk, the cracked pot still felt bad because it had leaked out half of its load, and so again the pot said sorry to the bearer for its failure.