Chinese · Idiom Attested

斩草除根

zhǎn cǎo chú gēn

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Traditional: 斬草除根

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To remove the cause of a problem completely so that it can never come back, as weeds must be pulled up by the roots. Used of wiping out enemies, crime, corruption or bad habits.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Cắt cỏ thì phải trừ cả rễ: diệt trừ tận gốc mầm mống tai hoạ để nó không thể mọc lại. Dùng khi nói về việc tiêu diệt kẻ thù, tội phạm, tệ nạn hay thói xấu.

Literally: cut down the weeds and dig out the roots

Examples

对付这些骗子，一定要斩草除根。Duìfu zhèxiē piànzi, yīdìng yào zhǎn cǎo chú gēn.With swindlers like these, you have to root them out completely.

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 “trảm thảo trừ căn” (tram-thao-tru-can). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.

Equivalents & related

Hán-Việt cognate trảm thảo trừ căn Cut the grass, remove the root — extermination that leaves a fiber leaves a spring regrowth. Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “斩草除根” mean?

To remove the cause of a problem completely so that it can never come back, as weeds must be pulled up by the roots. Used of wiping out enemies, crime, corruption or bad habits. Literally: cut down the weeds and dig out the roots

Is “斩草除根” formal or informal?

斩草除根 is generally neutral.

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