卑躬屈膝
bēi gōng qū xī
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
To bow and scrape; to behave in a servile, fawning way towards someone powerful. Always critical: it describes a person with no backbone or self-respect.
Khom lưng quỳ gối: hạ mình luồn cúi, khúm núm trước kẻ có quyền thế. Luôn mang ý chê người thiếu khí tiết, không có lòng tự trọng.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 062 (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): Hán-Việt reading 卑 = ti, 膝 = tất · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “ti cung khuất tất” (ti-cung-khuat-tat). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “卑躬屈膝” mean?
To bow and scrape; to behave in a servile, fawning way towards someone powerful. Always critical: it describes a person with no backbone or self-respect. Literally: lower the body, bend the knees
Is “卑躬屈膝” formal or informal?
卑躬屈膝 is generally neutral.