Tiếng Việt · Proverb Candidate

vắt chân chữ ngũ, đánh củ khoai-lang

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Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To work very hard but earn very little

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

làm việc chăm chỉ nhưng thu nhập rất thấp

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: squeeze the fifth toe, hit the sweet potato stem

Examples

Ông ấy vắt chân chữ ngũ, đánh củ khoai-lang cả ngày mà chẳng được gìHe worked very hard all day, but got almost nothing

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 “vắt chân chữ ngũ, đánh củ khoai-lang” mean?

To work very hard but earn very little Literally: squeeze the fifth toe, hit the sweet potato stem

Is “vắt chân chữ ngũ, đánh củ khoai-lang” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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