知子莫若父
zhī zǐ mò ruò fù
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
A father knows his own child better than anyone else does. Said when a parent turns out to know exactly what a son or daughter is like, is thinking or is about to do.
Hiểu con không ai bằng cha. Thường nói khi cha mẹ nắm rõ tính nết của con, đoán đúng điều con đang nghĩ hoặc sắp làm.
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 子 = tử, 父 = phụ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tri tử mạc nhược phụ” (tri-tu-mac-nhuoc-phu). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “知子莫若父” mean?
A father knows his own child better than anyone else does. Said when a parent turns out to know exactly what a son or daughter is like, is thinking or is about to do. Literally: for knowing a son, nobody matches the father
Is “知子莫若父” formal or informal?
知子莫若父 is generally neutral.