沉鱼落雁
chén yú luò yàn
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 沉魚落雁
Describes a woman so beautiful that fish dive out of sight and wild geese drop from the sky when they see her. A literary compliment for stunning beauty.
Đẹp đến mức cá thấy phải lặn, chim nhạn thấy phải sa xuống. Lời khen đậm chất văn chương dành cho sắc đẹp tuyệt trần của người phụ nữ.
Register: literary
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 沉 = trầm, 雁 = nhạn · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “trầm ngư lạc nhạn” (tram-ngu-lac-nhan). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “沉鱼落雁” mean?
Describes a woman so beautiful that fish dive out of sight and wild geese drop from the sky when they see her. A literary compliment for stunning beauty. Literally: fish dive deep, wild geese drop down
Is “沉鱼落雁” formal or informal?
沉鱼落雁 is generally literary.