三言两语
sān yán liǎng yǔ
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 三言兩語
Just a sentence or two; a very brief way of putting something. Often used in the negative, for a matter that cannot be explained so quickly.
Dăm ba câu, vài lời ngắn gọn. Thường dùng ở dạng phủ định, để nói một chuyện phức tạp không thể kể hết trong đôi ba câu.
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 “tam ngôn lưỡng ngữ” (tam-ngon-luong-ngu). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “三言两语” mean?
Just a sentence or two; a very brief way of putting something. Often used in the negative, for a matter that cannot be explained so quickly. Literally: three phrases, two remarks
Is “三言两语” formal or informal?
三言两语 is generally neutral.