清风明月
qīng fēng míng yuè
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 清風明月
A cool breeze and a bright moon: a calm, beautiful night. In literary use it also stands for a quiet, leisurely life with nature as one's only company.
Gió mát trăng trong: cảnh đêm đẹp, thanh tĩnh. Trong văn chương còn chỉ cuộc sống thanh nhàn, chỉ làm bạn với thiên nhiên, không bon chen.
Register: literary
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 “thanh phong minh nguyệt” (thanh-phong-minh-nguyet). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “清风明月” mean?
A cool breeze and a bright moon: a calm, beautiful night. In literary use it also stands for a quiet, leisurely life with nature as one's only company. Literally: a fresh breeze and a bright moon
Is “清风明月” formal or informal?
清风明月 is generally literary.