惊天动地

jīng tiān dòng dì

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Traditional: 驚天動地

Meaning · English

Earth-shaking: so loud, so great or so astonishing that it seems to shake heaven and earth. Used for huge noises, momentous events and heroic deeds, sometimes with playful exaggeration.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Làm kinh động cả trời đất: chỉ tiếng động cực lớn, hoặc sự kiện, hành động có tầm vóc và sức chấn động phi thường. Đôi khi dùng để nói quá cho vui.

Literally: startle heaven, shake earth

Register: neutral

Examples

我这辈子没做过什么惊天动地的大事。Wǒ zhè bèizi méi zuò guo shénme jīng tiān dòng dì de dàshì.I have never done anything earth-shaking in my life.

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): etymology of “kinh thiên động địa” = 驚天動地 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “kinh thiên động địa” (kinh-thien-dong-dia). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.

Equivalents & related

Common questions

What does “惊天动地” mean?

Earth-shaking: so loud, so great or so astonishing that it seems to shake heaven and earth. Used for huge noises, momentous events and heroic deeds, sometimes with playful exaggeration. Literally: startle heaven, shake earth

Is “惊天动地” formal or informal?

惊天动地 is generally neutral.

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