假仁假义
jiǎ rén jiǎ yì
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 假仁假義
Pretending to be kind and principled while really acting out of self-interest; hypocritical. A sharp criticism of people whose goodness is only for show.
Làm ra vẻ nhân đức, trọng nghĩa nhưng thực ra chỉ vì lợi riêng; đạo đức giả. Lời chê nặng dành cho kẻ ngoài mặt thì tử tế mà trong lòng thì không.
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 假 = giả; etymology of “giả nhân giả nghĩa” = 假仁假義 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “giả nhân giả nghĩa” (gia-nhan-gia-nghia). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “假仁假义” mean?
Pretending to be kind and principled while really acting out of self-interest; hypocritical. A sharp criticism of people whose goodness is only for show. Literally: fake kindness, fake righteousness
Is “假仁假义” formal or informal?
假仁假义 is generally neutral.