寻花问柳
xún huā wèn liǔ
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 尋花問柳
To visit prostitutes or run after women; a disapproving euphemism for a man's womanising. 'Flowers and willows' is an old polite name for courtesans; the phrase first meant enjoying spring scenery.
Tìm hoa hỏi liễu: cách nói tránh, mang ý chê, chỉ việc đàn ông lui tới chốn ăn chơi, tìm gái hoặc trăng hoa bên ngoài. “Hoa liễu” xưa là lối gọi tránh để chỉ kỹ nữ; ban đầu cụm này chỉ việc đi ngắm cảnh xuân.
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): Hán-Việt reading 问/問 = vấn · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tầm hoa vấn liễu” (tam-hoa-van-lieu). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “寻花问柳” mean?
To visit prostitutes or run after women; a disapproving euphemism for a man's womanising. 'Flowers and willows' is an old polite name for courtesans; the phrase first meant enjoying spring scenery. Literally: seek flowers, ask after willows
Is “寻花问柳” formal or informal?
寻花问柳 is generally neutral.