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
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.
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.
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): 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.