养虎遗患
yǎng hǔ yí huàn
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 養虎遺患
To spare or shelter a dangerous person and so store up disaster for yourself later. Used as a warning against being soft on an enemy or a wrongdoer.
Nuôi hổ rồi để lại mối lo về sau: dung túng, che chở kẻ nguy hiểm thì sau này chính mình chịu hại. Dùng để cảnh báo việc nương tay với kẻ thù hay kẻ xấu.
Register: formal
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 “dưỡng hổ di hoạn” (duong-ho-di-hoan). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “养虎遗患” mean?
To spare or shelter a dangerous person and so store up disaster for yourself later. Used as a warning against being soft on an enemy or a wrongdoer. Literally: raise a tiger and leave trouble behind
Is “养虎遗患” formal or informal?
养虎遗患 is generally formal.