势如破竹
shì rú pò zhú
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 勢如破竹
To advance with unstoppable momentum, winning again and again as easily as a knife runs down a length of bamboo. Used of armies, sports teams and anyone on a winning streak.
Thế mạnh như chẻ tre: tiến lên ào ạt, thắng liên tiếp, không gì cản nổi. Dùng cho quân đội, đội bóng hay bất cứ ai đang trên đà thắng lợi.
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 “thế như phá trúc” (the-nhu-pha-truc). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “势如破竹” mean?
To advance with unstoppable momentum, winning again and again as easily as a knife runs down a length of bamboo. Used of armies, sports teams and anyone on a winning streak. Literally: with a force like splitting bamboo
Is “势如破竹” formal or informal?
势如破竹 is generally neutral.