兔死狐悲
tù sǐ hú bēi
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
To feel sorrow, and fear for yourself, when someone of your own kind meets misfortune. In modern Chinese it often has a negative ring, as when one wrongdoer mourns another's fall.
Thỏ chết thì cáo buồn: thấy kẻ cùng loại, cùng cảnh gặp nạn mà xót xa và lo cho chính mình. Trong tiếng Trung ngày nay thường hàm ý chê, như kẻ xấu thương cho kẻ xấu.
Register: literary
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 ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 兔 = thố · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “thố tử hồ bi” (tho-tu-ho-bi). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “兔死狐悲” mean?
To feel sorrow, and fear for yourself, when someone of your own kind meets misfortune. In modern Chinese it often has a negative ring, as when one wrongdoer mourns another's fall. Literally: a dead hare, a grieving fox
Is “兔死狐悲” formal or informal?
兔死狐悲 is generally literary.