依样画葫芦
yī yàng huà hú lu
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 依樣畫葫蘆
To copy a model exactly, without thinking or adding anything of your own. Usually mildly critical of work that shows no originality; people also say it modestly about simply following an example.
Cứ theo mẫu có sẵn mà vẽ quả bầu hồ lô: bắt chước y nguyên, không suy nghĩ, không sáng tạo. Thường mang ý chê nhẹ; cũng dùng để nói khiêm tốn rằng mình chỉ làm theo mẫu.
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 芦/蘆 = lô · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “y dạng họa hồ lô” (y-dang-hoa-ho-lo). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “依样画葫芦” mean?
To copy a model exactly, without thinking or adding anything of your own. Usually mildly critical of work that shows no originality; people also say it modestly about simply following an example. Literally: follow the pattern to draw a gourd
Is “依样画葫芦” formal or informal?
依样画葫芦 is generally neutral.