患得患失
huàn dé huàn shī
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
To worry all the time about what you might gain or lose, and so be unable to act calmly or make up your mind. Critical in tone; common in talk about work, exams and love.
Chưa được thì lo không được, được rồi lại lo mất: lúc nào cũng thấp thỏm tính chuyện hơn thiệt nên không yên lòng, không dám quyết. Thường mang ý chê.
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 ↗ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “hoạn đắc hoạn thất” (hoan-dac-hoan-that). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “患得患失” mean?
To worry all the time about what you might gain or lose, and so be unable to act calmly or make up your mind. Critical in tone; common in talk about work, exams and love. Literally: fret over getting, fret over losing
Is “患得患失” formal or informal?
患得患失 is generally neutral.