tiền chinh mua phải cá thối
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
You get what you pay for
Literally: money buys rotten fish
Examples
Tiền chinh mua phải cá thối, nên tôi không bao giờ ham của rẻYou get what you pay for, so I never buy cheap things
AI-drafted example auto-approved by rule (illustrative, not a corpus attestation)
Sources & notes
Discovered via Nam ngạn chích cẩm (Phạm Quang Sán, 1918; public domain, via vi.wikisource); retrieved 2026-08-01. Source: source ↗ Attested in Nam ngạn chích cẩm (Phạm Quang Sán, 1918). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-08-01; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “tiền chinh mua phải cá thối” mean?
You get what you pay for Literally: money buys rotten fish
Is “tiền chinh mua phải cá thối” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.