Khen chanh thì chanh ngọt, chê hồng thì hồng chua

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Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

Praising something makes it better, criticizing makes it worse

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Khen ngợi làm cho điều gì đó tốt hơn, chỉ trích làm cho nó tồi tệ hơn

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: Praise lemon then lemon sweet, criticize pink then pink sour

Examples

Anh ấy luôn khen chanh thì chanh ngọt, chê hồng thì hồng chua khi nói về công việcHe always says that praising something makes it better, criticizing makes it worse when talking about his job

AI-drafted example auto-approved by rule (illustrative, not a corpus attestation)

Sources & notes

Headword listed in the vdict.com proverb dictionary index (discovery source; headword only — no source content copied). Entered as candidate 2026-08-05; definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-08-06; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “Khen chanh thì chanh ngọt, chê hồng thì hồng chua” mean?

Praising something makes it better, criticizing makes it worse Literally: Praise lemon then lemon sweet, criticize pink then pink sour

Is “Khen chanh thì chanh ngọt, chê hồng thì hồng chua” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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