口说无凭
kǒu shuō wú píng
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 口說無憑
Spoken words alone prove nothing. Said when asking for something in writing: a contract, a receipt, a signature.
Nói miệng thì không có gì làm bằng chứng. Thường nói khi muốn có giấy tờ, hợp đồng, biên nhận hay chữ ký cho chắc.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 061 (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): Hán-Việt reading 说/說 = thuyết · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “khẩu thuyết vô bằng” (khau-thuyet-vo-bang). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “口说无凭” mean?
Spoken words alone prove nothing. Said when asking for something in writing: a contract, a receipt, a signature. Literally: the mouth speaks, there is no proof
Is “口说无凭” formal or informal?
口说无凭 is generally neutral.