无名小卒
wú míng xiǎo zú
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 無名小卒
A nobody: a person with no name, rank or influence, like an unknown foot soldier. Used dismissively about other people, or modestly about oneself.
Tên lính quèn không ai biết tên: người không có tên tuổi, địa vị gì. Dùng để coi thường người khác hoặc để nói khiêm tốn về chính mình.
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 ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): etymology of “vô danh tiểu tốt” = 無名小卒 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “vô danh tiểu tốt” (vo-danh-tieu-tot). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “无名小卒” mean?
A nobody: a person with no name, rank or influence, like an unknown foot soldier. Used dismissively about other people, or modestly about oneself. Literally: a nameless little foot soldier
Is “无名小卒” formal or informal?
无名小卒 is generally neutral.