Chinese · Idiom Attested

神出鬼没

shén chū guǐ mò

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Traditional: 神出鬼沒

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To come and go so quickly and unpredictably that nobody can tell where you will turn up next. First said of troops and their tactics, now of anyone or anything elusive.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Lúc ẩn lúc hiện như thần như quỷ: hành tung nhanh và khó lường, không ai đoán trước được. Vốn nói về cách dùng binh, nay dùng cho bất cứ ai hay vật gì khó nắm bắt.

Literally: emerge like a god, sink like a ghost

Examples

这个小偷神出鬼没，警察一直抓不到他。Zhège xiǎotōu shén chū guǐ mò, jǐngchá yīzhí zhuā bù dào tā.This thief comes and goes like a ghost; the police have never managed to catch him.

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 “thần xuất quỉ một” (than-xuat-qui-mot). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.

Equivalents & related

Hán-Việt cognate thần xuất quỉ một Appearing like gods, vanishing like spirits — maneuvers too quick and clean for any eye to fix. Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “神出鬼没” mean?

To come and go so quickly and unpredictably that nobody can tell where you will turn up next. First said of troops and their tactics, now of anyone or anything elusive. Literally: emerge like a god, sink like a ghost

Is “神出鬼没” formal or informal?

神出鬼没 is generally neutral.

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