Chinese · Proverb Attested

无毒不丈夫

wú dú bù zhàng fu

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Traditional: 無毒不丈夫

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

A man who is not ruthless will never achieve great things. A cynical maxim, quoted to justify harsh, merciless behaviour or to comment on it.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Không tàn độc thì không làm nên đấng trượng phu: muốn làm việc lớn phải dám ra tay tàn nhẫn. Câu nói dùng để biện minh cho hành động nhẫn tâm, hoặc để bình phẩm về nó.

Literally: who is not venomous is no real man

Examples

他常说无毒不丈夫，做事从不手软。Tā cháng shuō wú dú bù zhàng fu, zuòshì cóngbù shǒuruǎn.He likes to say that a real man must be ruthless, and he never goes easy on anyone.

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 “vô độc bất trượng phu” (vo-doc-bat-truong-phu). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.

Equivalents & related

Hán-Việt cognate vô độc bất trượng phu No ruthlessness, no great man — the cynic's rule that greatness requires a hard heart. Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “无毒不丈夫” mean?

A man who is not ruthless will never achieve great things. A cynical maxim, quoted to justify harsh, merciless behaviour or to comment on it. Literally: who is not venomous is no real man

Is “无毒不丈夫” formal or informal?

无毒不丈夫 is generally neutral.

👁 Views 0 today 0 past 7 days 0 this month 0 all time