从一而终
cóng yī ér zhōng
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 從一而終
To stay with one partner for life. It was the old rule that a wife must never remarry, even as a widow; today it also praises anyone who stays faithful to one person, job or cause to the end.
Theo một người đến trọn đời. Xưa là lễ giáo buộc người vợ chỉ lấy một chồng, chồng chết cũng không tái giá; nay còn dùng để khen người chung thuỷ với một người, hay gắn bó đến cùng với một nghề, một lý tưởng.
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 而 = nhi · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tùng nhứt nhi chung” (tung-nhut-nhi-chung). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “从一而终” mean?
To stay with one partner for life. It was the old rule that a wife must never remarry, even as a widow; today it also praises anyone who stays faithful to one person, job or cause to the end. Literally: follow one until the end
Is “从一而终” formal or informal?
从一而终 is generally neutral.