keep up with the Joneses
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Meaning · English
Try to maintain the same social and material standards as others.
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Duy trì tiêu chuẩn xã hội và vật chất như người khác
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
This is because poorer families who see the superior goods being consumed by their richer neighbours will attempt to ‘ keep up with the Joneses’ and so spend a large fraction of their incomes.
Britain could not match these percentages but it was catching up, ‘ keeping up with the Joneses’.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Figurative class: Metaphor (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “keep up with the Joneses” mean?
Try to maintain the same social and material standards as others.
Is “keep up with the Joneses” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.
What is the closest equivalent?
“so bì” (Tiếng Việt) — near equivalent.