鱼目混珠
yú mù hùn zhū
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 魚目混珠
To pass off something fake or inferior as the real thing by mixing it in with genuine goods. Used of counterfeit products, and of unqualified people who slip in among real experts.
Mắt cá trộn lẫn với ngọc trai: đem đồ giả, đồ xấu trà trộn vào đồ thật, đồ tốt để đánh lừa. Dùng cho hàng giả, hàng nhái và cả người kém cỏi lẫn vào hàng người giỏi.
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 混 = hỗn · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “ngư mục hổn châu” (ngu-muc-hon-chau). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “鱼目混珠” mean?
To pass off something fake or inferior as the real thing by mixing it in with genuine goods. Used of counterfeit products, and of unqualified people who slip in among real experts. Literally: fish eyes mingled with pearls
Is “鱼目混珠” formal or informal?
鱼目混珠 is generally neutral.