一本万利
yī běn wàn lì
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 一本萬利
To make an enormous profit from a very small investment. Used for a business or deal that pays back many times over, and as a good wish for people in trade.
Bỏ ra một đồng vốn mà thu về vạn đồng lời: vốn ít mà lãi cực lớn. Dùng để nói về mối làm ăn sinh lời gấp bội, và cũng là lời chúc phát tài dành cho người buôn bán.
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 “nhất bản vạn lợi” (nhat-ban-van-loi). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “一本万利” mean?
To make an enormous profit from a very small investment. Used for a business or deal that pays back many times over, and as a good wish for people in trade. Literally: one outlay, profit ten thousand times over
Is “一本万利” formal or informal?
一本万利 is generally neutral.