自生自灭
zì shēng zì miè
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 自生自滅
To appear and die out on its own, with nobody caring or stepping in. Mostly used after verbs like 'let' or 'leave': to leave a person, an animal or a project to sink or swim.
Tự sinh ra rồi tự mất đi, không ai chăm sóc hay can thiệp. Thường đi sau “để mặc”, “bỏ mặc”: phó mặc một người, một con vật hay một dự án cho số phận.
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): etymology of “tự sinh tự diệt” = 自生自滅 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tự sinh tự diệt” (tu-sinh-tu-diet). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “自生自灭” mean?
To appear and die out on its own, with nobody caring or stepping in. Mostly used after verbs like 'let' or 'leave': to leave a person, an animal or a project to sink or swim. Literally: arise by itself, perish by itself
Is “自生自灭” formal or informal?
自生自灭 is generally neutral.