苦尽甘来
kǔ jìn gān lái
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 苦盡甘來
When the hard times are over, good times arrive. Used to encourage someone who is struggling, or to describe a happy turn after long hardship.
Hết khổ thì đến sướng. Dùng để động viên người đang vất vả, hoặc để nói về lúc cuộc sống tươi sáng trở lại sau thời gian dài gian khổ.
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 ↗ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “khổ tận cam lai” (kho-tan-cam-lai). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “苦尽甘来” mean?
When the hard times are over, good times arrive. Used to encourage someone who is struggling, or to describe a happy turn after long hardship. Literally: bitterness ends, sweetness comes
Is “苦尽甘来” formal or informal?
苦尽甘来 is generally neutral.