博古通今
bó gǔ tōng jīn
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Having deep knowledge of both the past and the present: widely read in old books and well informed about today. Used as high praise for a scholar, a teacher or anyone of great learning.
Hiểu rộng chuyện xưa, thông suốt chuyện nay: học vấn uyên bác. Dùng để ca ngợi học giả, thầy giáo hay bất cứ ai có kiến thức sâu rộng.
Register: formal
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 ↗ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “bác cổ thông kim” (bac-co-thong-kim). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “博古通今” mean?
Having deep knowledge of both the past and the present: widely read in old books and well informed about today. Used as high praise for a scholar, a teacher or anyone of great learning. Literally: knowing the ancient widely, the present thoroughly
Is “博古通今” formal or informal?
博古通今 is generally formal.