tốt thì khoe xấu thì che
Show the fine, veil the flawed — instinct's own advertising department.
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
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 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”.
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.
Ultr — compressed 'u là trời' ('oh my heavens'): the keyboard gasp of Vietnamese Gen Z.
Serenely self-contained — at ease wherever one stands, beholden to nothing.
Cutting flesh to dress the sore — relief today carved out of tomorrow.
Flexing three inches of tongue — deploying every wile of persuasion.
Bend the tree while it's young; teach the child while it's innocent — formation's window in one couplet.
Bent knee and pliant back — bowing and scraping to power.
Bend bamboo while it's still a shoot; guide a wife in her uncertain first days — formation belongs to beginnings.
Drinking down to the dregs — greed that leaves nothing, not even the lees, for anyone else.
Drinking river water, remember the source upstream — every benefit has a headwater to honor.
Judging heroes over wine — the lordly presumption of Cao Cao ranking the world's great men at table.
Drinking like a sunken jar — a capacity the vat itself would respect.
Bend a foot to gain a fathom? — the gentleman refuses; no profit licenses a crooked inch.
initialism of về việc (“on the matter of”)
Humped shoulders and corded muscle — the body labor built.
Borrow nine, repay ten — decency returns a little more than it took.
Borrow with a roar of thanks, repay with a giggle — glad-handed at the asking, slippery at the settling.
initialism of vãi cả lồn
Distant water can't douse the near fire — the far kin, the far help, always a bucket too late.
Make hay while the sun shines.
Lazy at work, industrious at mischief — energy present, aimed wrong.