自圆其说
zì yuán qí shuō
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 自圓其說
To make your own story or argument hang together, with no gaps or contradictions. Mostly used in the negative: someone 'cannot' do it when their explanation falls apart under questioning.
Làm cho lời giải thích hay lập luận của mình trước sau khớp nhau, không có kẽ hở. Hay gặp nhất ở dạng phủ định: “không thể” làm vậy, tức là càng nói càng lộ mâu thuẫn.
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 说/說 = thuyết · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tự viên kì thuyết” (tu-vien-ki-thuyet). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “自圆其说” mean?
To make your own story or argument hang together, with no gaps or contradictions. Mostly used in the negative: someone 'cannot' do it when their explanation falls apart under questioning. Literally: make one's own account round and whole
Is “自圆其说” formal or informal?
自圆其说 is generally neutral.