身不由己
shēn bù yóu jǐ
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Not free to act as you wish; forced by circumstances or by other people. Used to explain, often with regret, that you had no real choice.
Không tự quyết định được việc mình làm, phải theo hoàn cảnh hoặc ý người khác. Thường dùng để phân trần rằng mình không có lựa chọn.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 061 (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 “thân bất do kỷ” (than-bat-do-ky). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “身不由己” mean?
Not free to act as you wish; forced by circumstances or by other people. Used to explain, often with regret, that you had no real choice. Literally: one's person is not ruled by oneself
Is “身不由己” formal or informal?
身不由己 is generally neutral.