骨肉相残
gǔ ròu xiāng cán
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 骨肉相殘
Members of one family turning on each other, even to the point of murder; by extension, people of one nation fighting among themselves. Used for bitter feuds over power or inheritance, and for civil wars.
Ruột thịt tàn hại lẫn nhau: người thân trong nhà hãm hại, giết chóc nhau; mở rộng ra là người cùng một nước đánh giết nhau. Dùng cho cảnh tranh giành quyền lực, gia sản trong gia đình và cho nội chiến.
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 肉 = nhục · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “cốt nhục tương tàn” (cot-nhuc-tuong-tan). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “骨肉相残” mean?
Members of one family turning on each other, even to the point of murder; by extension, people of one nation fighting among themselves. Used for bitter feuds over power or inheritance, and for civil wars. Literally: bone-and-flesh relatives harming one another
Is “骨肉相残” formal or informal?
骨肉相残 is generally neutral.