Chinese · Idiom Attested

先天不足

xiān tiān bù zú

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

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Weak from birth: a constitution that was frail from the very start. Also used for a plan, team or product with a built-in weakness because its foundations were poor.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Thể chất yếu ngay từ khi sinh ra, do bẩm sinh đã thiếu hụt. Nghĩa rộng chỉ một kế hoạch, tổ chức hay sản phẩm có điểm yếu từ gốc vì nền tảng ban đầu kém.

Literally: what one is born with falls short

Examples

这个孩子先天不足，从小身体就弱。Zhège háizi xiān tiān bù zú, cóngxiǎo shēntǐ jiù ruò.This child was born with a weak constitution and has been frail since he was little.

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 “tiên thiên bất túc” (tien-thien-bat-tuc). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.

Equivalents & related

Hán-Việt cognate tiên thiên bất túc Congenitally insufficient — frail from birth; weak in one's very constitution. Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “先天不足” mean?

Weak from birth: a constitution that was frail from the very start. Also used for a plan, team or product with a built-in weakness because its foundations were poor. Literally: what one is born with falls short

Is “先天不足” formal or informal?

先天不足 is generally neutral.

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