tự chiêu kỳ họa
Summoning one's own calamity — disaster by personal invitation.
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Where will you be? Anywhere Hà Nội & the NorthHuế / Đà Nẵng & the CenterSài Gòn & the SouthOnline slang Bắc ↔ Nam words
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.
Men are blind in their own cause.
"This is an emergency" — formal enough for officials, clear enough for anyone; the word doing the work is "khẩn cấp" (urgent).
initialism of vãi lồn
Elephants know elephants, horses know horses — kind recognizes kind, thieves most fluently of all.
to forget and deny the favors of one's benefactor; to betray one's kindness
The false accuser inherits the charge — whatever sentence was sought lands on the one who lied for it.
Wherever the fun is, there he's posted — appetite for play assigning its own duty station.
to overdo something, especially to overspend or to squander
Top-tier, VIP-grade — an exaggerated phonetic respelling of "VIP", said admiringly (or mock-admiringly) of anything fancy.
Wiping the face without sparing the nose — a rebuke that forgets whose relatives are present.
to do something extremely dangerous
Texting shortcut for “vẫn” — still. “vx ổn” = still fine.
True gold fears no fire — the genuine passes through any test unsinged.
to be involved in long, dangerous, life-or-death missions, especially military ones
Dizzy-headed and fever-skinned — out of sorts, aching and unwell.
synonym of vân vân và mây mây
and so on and so forth; et cetera
Pale clouds and light wind — composure worn like fair weather.
A martial-arts-flavored "holy smokes" — "chưởng" (palm strike, from kung-fu novels) turns the crude intensifier "vãi" into cartoonish amazement.
An over-the-top intensifier for shock or awe — "vãi" cranked up by the absurd "cả nồi" (the whole pot). Deliberately silly, mildly crude.
full-fare ticket and half-fare ticket
Parting the clouds to shoot the goose — talent aiming high and hitting; ambition with the skill to match.
Smug as a father-in-law after the punch — pride bruised and doubled down; unearned swagger at its most infamous.
For a husband's sake she strains at the work — no one was born with iron skin and bronze bones.
(adverb) why
Carrying banana stumps for the pig's-head feast — dignity spent on an undignified errand, for duty's sake.
Should a phoenix sail past, mother calls it a chicken — and the child agrees — filial deference measured against the evidence of one's own eyes.
'Suppose the bridge were planked...' — the lullaby's soft once-upon-a-wish for lovelier things.
Though the plank bridge is nailed firm and the bamboo bridge sways and pitches — hard going, mother leads the child: the child walks to school, mother walks the school of life.
Though mother owns nothing at all, mother and child are never parted — poverty cannot divide that pair.