心中有鬼
xīn zhōng yǒu guǐ
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
To have something to hide: a guilty secret or a dishonest plan that makes a person uneasy. Said when someone's nervous or evasive behaviour gives them away.
Trong lòng có điều khuất tất: có chuyện mờ ám hoặc ý đồ xấu cần che giấu nên thấp thỏm, mất tự nhiên. Thường nói khi thấy ai đó lấm lét, né tránh.
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 “tâm trung hữu quỷ” (tam-trung-huu-quy). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “心中有鬼” mean?
To have something to hide: a guilty secret or a dishonest plan that makes a person uneasy. Said when someone's nervous or evasive behaviour gives them away. Literally: the heart has a ghost in it
Is “心中有鬼” formal or informal?
心中有鬼 is generally neutral.