Tiếng Việt · Proverb Candidate

Đắt ra quế, rẻ ra củi. - Đắt thì quế, ế thì củi

🎙 Say it

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Something is only valued when it is scarce, but not when it is abundant

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Khi khan hiếm thì có giá, khi dồi dào thì không

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: expensive then cinnamon, cheap then firewood

Examples

Họ không đánh giá cao tôi khi tôi còn làm việc cho họ, nhưng khi tôi nghỉ việc, họ mới thấy thiếu tôi: đắt ra quế, rẻ ra củiThey didn't appreciate me when I was working for them, but when I quit, they realized they needed me: expensive then cinnamon, cheap then firewood

AI-drafted example auto-approved by rule (illustrative, not a corpus attestation)

Sources & notes

Headword listed in the vdict.com proverb dictionary index (discovery source; headword only — no source content copied). Entered as candidate 2026-08-05; definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-08-09; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “Đắt ra quế, rẻ ra củi. - Đắt thì quế, ế thì củi” mean?

Something is only valued when it is scarce, but not when it is abundant Literally: expensive then cinnamon, cheap then firewood

Is “Đắt ra quế, rẻ ra củi. - Đắt thì quế, ế thì củi” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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