骑虎难下
qí hǔ nán xià
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 騎虎難下
To be stuck in something risky that you can neither safely continue nor safely stop, like a rider who dares not get off a tiger. Used for projects, quarrels and commitments that have gone too far to drop.
Đã cưỡi lên lưng hổ thì khó mà xuống: lỡ làm một việc mạo hiểm, giờ làm tiếp thì khó mà dừng lại cũng không xong. Dùng cho dự án, cuộc tranh cãi hay cam kết đã đi quá xa, không thể bỏ giữa chừng.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 062 (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 “kị hổ nan hạ” (ki-ho-nan-ha). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “骑虎难下” mean?
To be stuck in something risky that you can neither safely continue nor safely stop, like a rider who dares not get off a tiger. Used for projects, quarrels and commitments that have gone too far to drop. Literally: riding a tiger, hard to get down
Is “骑虎难下” formal or informal?
骑虎难下 is generally neutral.