进退两难
jìn tuì liǎng nán
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 進退兩難
To be stuck in a dilemma where going ahead and backing out are equally difficult. Used when every option has a serious cost.
Tiến cũng khó mà lui cũng khó. Chỉ tình thế khó xử, chọn đường nào cũng bất lợi.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 061 (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): etymology of “tiến thoái lưỡng nan” = 進退兩難 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tiến thoái lưỡng nan” (tien-thoai-luong-nan). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “进退两难” mean?
To be stuck in a dilemma where going ahead and backing out are equally difficult. Used when every option has a serious cost. Literally: advance or retreat, both hard
Is “进退两难” formal or informal?
进退两难 is generally neutral.