无中生有
wú zhōng shēng yǒu
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 無中生有
To make something up out of thin air: to invent facts, rumours or accusations that have no basis at all. Used as a criticism or an angry denial.
Từ chỗ không có gì mà dựng thành có: bịa đặt sự việc, tin đồn hay lời buộc tội hoàn toàn không có căn cứ. Dùng để phê phán, hoặc để bác bỏ điều người khác nói về 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 ↗ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “vô trung sanh hữu” (vo-trung-sanh-huu). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “无中生有” mean?
To make something up out of thin air: to invent facts, rumours or accusations that have no basis at all. Used as a criticism or an angry denial. Literally: from nothing, produce something
Is “无中生有” formal or informal?
无中生有 is generally neutral.