温良恭俭让
wēn liáng gōng jiǎn ràng
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 溫良恭儉讓
Five virtues ascribed to Confucius: gentle, kind, respectful, restrained and ready to yield. Used as a set label for a mild, courteous character, sometimes hinting that someone is too soft to put up a fight.
Năm đức tính được cho là của Khổng Tử: ôn hoà, hiền lành, cung kính, tiết chế và khiêm nhường. Dùng để tả người hoà nhã, lễ độ; đôi khi hàm ý quá mềm mỏng, thiếu tinh thần đấu tranh.
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 温/溫 = ôn, 让/讓 = nhượng · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “ôn, lương, cung, kiệm, nhượng” (on-luong-cung-kiem-nhuong). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “温良恭俭让” mean?
Five virtues ascribed to Confucius: gentle, kind, respectful, restrained and ready to yield. Used as a set label for a mild, courteous character, sometimes hinting that someone is too soft to put up a fight. Literally: gentle, kind, respectful, frugal, yielding
Is “温良恭俭让” formal or informal?
温良恭俭让 is generally literary.