人定胜天
rén dìng shèng tiān
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 人定勝天
Human effort and determination can overcome nature and fate. Said to encourage people facing natural disasters or great hardship, with the idea that nothing is fixed in advance.
Ý chí và sức người có thể thắng được trời, tức là vượt lên trên thiên nhiên và số phận. Dùng để khích lệ khi phải đối mặt với thiên tai hay khó khăn lớn.
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 ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): etymology of “nhân định thắng thiên” = 人定勝天 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “nhân định thắng thiên” (nhan-dinh-thang-thien). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “人定胜天” mean?
Human effort and determination can overcome nature and fate. Said to encourage people facing natural disasters or great hardship, with the idea that nothing is fixed in advance. Literally: human will prevails over heaven
Is “人定胜天” formal or informal?
人定胜天 is generally neutral.