按兵不动
àn bīng bù dòng
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 按兵不動
To hold back and take no action for now, waiting to see how things develop. Originally military; now used for companies, investors or anyone who deliberately waits.
Giữ quân lại, chưa cho hành động; nghĩa rộng là tạm thời chưa làm gì, chờ xem tình hình rồi mới quyết định.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 061 (2026-11-13). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): etymology of “án binh bất động” = 按兵不動 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “án binh bất động” (an-binh-bat-dong). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Lighter cards are two steps away in the meaning graph — equivalents of equivalents, reached via the entry shown on the card.
Common questions
What does “按兵不动” mean?
To hold back and take no action for now, waiting to see how things develop. Originally military; now used for companies, investors or anyone who deliberately waits. Literally: hold the troops, do not move
Is “按兵不动” formal or informal?
按兵不动 is generally neutral.