惊弓之鸟
jīng gōng zhī niǎo
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 驚弓之鳥
📖 Read the story behind this idiom: The frightened goose
Someone who was badly frightened once and now panics at the slightest sign of danger, like a bird that has already felt an arrow. Used as a noun, often in comparisons.
Con chim từng khiếp sợ vì cung tên: người đã một lần gặp nạn nên hễ thấy chút dấu hiệu nguy hiểm là hoảng hốt. Dùng như danh từ, thường trong câu so sánh.
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 “kinh cung chi điểu” (kinh-cung-chi-dieu). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “惊弓之鸟” mean?
Someone who was badly frightened once and now panics at the slightest sign of danger, like a bird that has already felt an arrow. Used as a noun, often in comparisons. Literally: a bird frightened by the bow
Is “惊弓之鸟” formal or informal?
惊弓之鸟 is generally neutral.