避重就轻
bì zhòng jiù qīng
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 避重就輕
To steer clear of the serious part of a matter and deal only with the minor part, for instance admitting small faults while keeping quiet about the main one. Also: to pick easy tasks and dodge hard ones.
Tránh phần nặng, chọn phần nhẹ: lảng tránh điều hệ trọng, chỉ nói đến chuyện nhỏ, chẳng hạn chỉ nhận lỗi vặt mà lờ đi lỗi chính. Cũng chỉ việc lánh nặng tìm nhẹ trong công việc.
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 就 = tựu · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tị trọng tựu khinh” (ti-trong-tuu-khinh). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “避重就轻” mean?
To steer clear of the serious part of a matter and deal only with the minor part, for instance admitting small faults while keeping quiet about the main one. Also: to pick easy tasks and dodge hard ones. Literally: dodge the heavy, go for the light
Is “避重就轻” formal or informal?
避重就轻 is generally neutral.