言过其实
yán guò qí shí
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 言過其實
To describe something as bigger, better or worse than it really is; to go beyond the truth. Used to judge a claim, a report or a piece of praise as exaggerated.
Lời nói vượt quá sự thật: nói phóng đại, thổi phồng so với thực tế. Dùng để nhận xét một lời khen, một bản tin hay một lời quảng cáo là nói quá.
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 “ngôn quá kì thật” (ngon-qua-ki-that). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “言过其实” mean?
To describe something as bigger, better or worse than it really is; to go beyond the truth. Used to judge a claim, a report or a piece of praise as exaggerated. Literally: the words go beyond the facts
Is “言过其实” formal or informal?
言过其实 is generally neutral.