自食其力
zì shí qí lì
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
To support oneself through one's own work instead of depending on others. Said with approval of people who pay their own way rather than rely on family or charity.
Tự nuôi sống mình bằng sức lao động của chính mình, không dựa dẫm vào ai. Dùng với ý khen người tự lập, tự kiếm sống chứ không trông chờ vào gia đình hay sự giúp đỡ.
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 食 = thực · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tự thực kỳ lực” (tu-thuc-ky-luc). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “自食其力” mean?
To support oneself through one's own work instead of depending on others. Said with approval of people who pay their own way rather than rely on family or charity. Literally: feed oneself through one's own labour
Is “自食其力” formal or informal?
自食其力 is generally neutral.