Chinese · Idiom Attested

避坑落井

bì kēng luò jǐng

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To get clear of one trouble and immediately land in another, often a worse one. A bookish expression, seldom heard in everyday Mandarin.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Tránh được cái hố lại rơi xuống giếng: vừa thoát nạn này đã gặp ngay nạn khác, có khi còn nặng hơn. Là cách nói sách vở, ít gặp trong tiếng Trung hằng ngày.

Literally: step round the pit, tumble into the well

Examples

借高利贷来还债，真是避坑落井。Jiè gāolìdài lái huánzhài, zhēn shì bì kēng luò jǐng.Borrowing from a loan shark to pay off a debt really is jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

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 坑 = khanh · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tị khanh lạc tỉnh” (ti-khanh-lac-tinh). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.

Equivalents & related

Hán-Việt cognate tị khanh lạc tỉnh Dodge the pit, drop into the well — escape one trap by way of the next. Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “避坑落井” mean?

To get clear of one trouble and immediately land in another, often a worse one. A bookish expression, seldom heard in everyday Mandarin. Literally: step round the pit, tumble into the well

Is “避坑落井” formal or informal?

避坑落井 is generally literary.

👁 Views 0 today 0 past 7 days 0 this month 0 all time