A toad thinking of eating swan meat

There is a Chinese saying: “lai4ha2ma5 xiang3 chi1 tian1'e2 rou4癩蛤蟆想吃天鵝肉” and the Mandarin pronunciations are as follows.

lai4ha2ma5	癩蛤蟆	toad
xiang3	想	think
chi1	吃	eat
tian1'e2	天鵝	swan
rou4	肉	meat

A toad thinking of eating swan meat – which actual meaning to punch above one’s weight i.e. a person or country becomes involved in, or succeeds in, an activity which needs more power, money, resources. than it has.

We know this character 癩 as tai2 as in tai2go1 to mean leprosy.

We call toad gab4bo5 蛤蟆 ; think / want as sioⁿ6aiⁿ3 想欲  ; to eat as ziah8 食 ; swan as tiang1gho5 天鵝 ; meat as 肉 nêg8.

Professor Lim said that when he was a child, meat was called bhah4 and many Teochew people living in SE Asia still call meat bhah4.  Professor Lim did not explain why or how bhah4 became known as nêg8.

However, the meat radical is still called 肉/月字 bhah4 zi7.

Therefore, we could say the above Chinese saying in Teochew as “gab4bo5 sioⁿ6aiⁿ3 ziah8 tiang1gho5 nêg8 蛤蟆想欲食天鵝肉” a toad wanting to eat swan meat. 

tiang1gho5 天鵝