quả cau nho nhỏ, cái vỏ vân vân, nay anh học gần, mai anh học xa

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

A person's abilities or talents are not proportional to their appearance

Literally: small areca nut, striped shell, today you study near, tomorrow you study far

Examples

Cậu bé ấy quả cau nho nhỏ, cái vỏ vân vân, nhưng nó học giỏi lắm.That boy may be small, but he's very smart.

AI-drafted example auto-approved by rule (illustrative, not a corpus attestation)

Sources & notes

Discovered via Vietnamese Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0); retrieved 2026-08-01. Source: source ↗ Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-08-01; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “quả cau nho nhỏ, cái vỏ vân vân, nay anh học gần, mai anh học xa” mean?

A person's abilities or talents are not proportional to their appearance Literally: small areca nut, striped shell, today you study near, tomorrow you study far

Is “quả cau nho nhỏ, cái vỏ vân vân, nay anh học gần, mai anh học xa” formal or informal?

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