无功不受禄
wú gōng bù shòu lù
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 無功不受祿
One should not accept a reward, gift or payment that one has done nothing to earn. Mostly said as a polite, modest way of declining a present or a favour.
Không có công thì không nhận lộc: chưa làm được gì thì không nên nhận quà cáp hay thù lao. Thường nói khi khiêm tốn, lịch sự từ chối một món quà hoặc một ân huệ.
Register: neutral
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 ↗ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “vô công bất thụ lộc” (vo-cong-bat-thu-loc). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “无功不受禄” mean?
One should not accept a reward, gift or payment that one has done nothing to earn. Mostly said as a polite, modest way of declining a present or a favour. Literally: no merit earned, no reward taken
Is “无功不受禄” formal or informal?
无功不受禄 is generally neutral.