Tiếng Việt · Proverb Candidate

Nước chảy xuôi, bè kéo ngược

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Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Things are going badly

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

mọi việc diễn ra không suôn sẻ

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: Water flows downstream, raft pulls upstream

Examples

Sau khi mất việc, anh ấy gặp nhiều khó khăn, thật là nước chảy xuôi, bè kéo ngược.After losing his job, he encountered many difficulties, it was really going badly.

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 2026-08-07; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “Nước chảy xuôi, bè kéo ngược” mean?

Things are going badly Literally: Water flows downstream, raft pulls upstream

Is “Nước chảy xuôi, bè kéo ngược” formal or informal?

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

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