tị thật kích hư
Avoid the solid, strike the hollow — attack where the enemy isn't.
All languages English Tiếng Việt
Where will you be? Anywhere Hà Nội & the NorthHuế / Đà Nẵng & the CenterSài Gòn & the SouthOnline slang Bắc ↔ Nam words
Avoid the solid, strike the hollow — attack where the enemy isn't.
Shunning strength to work the weakness — pressure applied where resistance is thinnest.
Taking the light and leaving the heavy — duty triaged by personal convenience.
Sitting down to enjoy the finished thing — arriving at the banquet after others built the kitchen.
Sitting on the mountain to watch the tigers fight — letting rivals maul each other, then collecting.
Sit idle and eat, and a mountain erodes — no fortune outlasts a workless appetite.
Express and double-quick — at absolute top speed.
When the fire dims and the lamp goes out — the neighborly hour of need; who comes then is kin.
Dark as a stoppered jar — pitch black; or thick-skulled beyond teaching.
Dark falls — that's home; where you stumble — that's the bed — the drifter's whole real estate.
Seeing off the old, welcoming the new — the year-end rite of letting go and greeting what comes.
A good name beats a good coat — wear reputation before broadcloth.
Sound timber beats fine varnish; a plain face with good character beats beauty — the standard verse of substance over surface.
people tend to show what's good about themselves and hide what's bad
A good fate beats a good head — the lucky outrun the clever.
Show the fine, veil the flawed — instinct's own advertising department.
Born lucky, dine reclining — a good fate does the working while its owner stretches out.
Good hair tires the house-post — long-haired beauty beating her tresses dry against the pillar.
Huge, whopping — emphatically oversized.
The domineering CEO archetype from C-drama and web novels — impossibly rich, cold to everyone, soft for exactly one person; used teasingly for bossy boyfriends and alpha posturing.
The hen's offense, the duck's fine — punished for a fowl you never touched; blame that lands on the bystander.
Guilt spreads, penalty floods — the old collective punishments, drowning the innocent adjacent.
Doubted guilt weighs light, doubted merit weighs heavy — justice errs toward mercy and reward.
Guilt files upward to the senior — the prow errs and the helm is caned; command owns the error.
Crime great and evil extreme — guilt at its terminal grade.
“Now it’s on” — trouble (or serious business) has officially arrived; also “going all out”.
"We're here / it's arrived" — arrival in two syllables: the destination, the food, the long-awaited package.
utterly alone; isolated without family, friends, or support
all men are brothers
Four generations under one roof — great-grandparents to great-grandchildren in a single household.
art of improvisation, through depicting one's scenery or situation at a fleeting moment
the straw that broke the camel's back
since time immemorial
Since Tự Đức took the throne... — the protest verses dated by reign, where complaint learned to keep a calendar.
from the river to the sea (a phrase supporting Palestinian self-determination)
(phrase) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see từng, lớp.
A child untaught is the father's fault — the old ledger of parental duty.
Every child heirs alike — the estate divided per head, whichever bed they were born from.
Of the dead, no verdicts — the grave closes the case.
The dead do not live again, the severed does not rejoin — two finalities to weigh before the blade falls.
Within the four seas, all are brothers — one root under every stranger.
Death and life are fated; wealth and honor sit with heaven — the couplet that files mortality under destiny.
Dead with no ground to lie in — ruin's last line: not even a burial plot.
The child shields the father — blood's code of concealment, older than the courts.
Wine makes no one drunk; drinkers do — the bottle's oldest alibi, refused.
Wine in the heart is a tiger in the forest — drink houses a predator where judgment lived.
to compose and perform all by oneself
Summoning one's own calamity — disaster by personal invitation.
Can't save yourself, yet rescuing others — the drowning lifeguard problem.
Taking oneself for the standard — self-certainty immune to correction.
to reap what one sows
to do DIY home improvements
Bearing the offense, building the merit — guilt worked off in service.
to do things by oneself; to stand on one's own two feet
Eat by your own strength — hands that work feed the jaw that chews.
to do as one pleases, to be impetuous
Rounding out one's own story — patching the theory until it agrees with itself.
Mind one's own business
Troubles come one after another
When disaster strikes, troubles follow