走火入魔
zǒu huǒ rù mó
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
To become so obsessed with something that you lose your balance and good sense. It first described martial-arts or meditation practice going wrong; now it is used for any unhealthy obsession.
Mê mải một thứ đến mức mất cả tỉnh táo. Vốn chỉ việc luyện công, ngồi thiền sai cách khiến tâm trí rối loạn; nay dùng cho mọi kiểu đam mê quá đà.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 061 (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 “tẩu hỏa nhập ma” (tau-hoa-nhap-ma). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “走火入魔” mean?
To become so obsessed with something that you lose your balance and good sense. It first described martial-arts or meditation practice going wrong; now it is used for any unhealthy obsession. Literally: the fire strays, the demon enters
Is “走火入魔” formal or informal?
走火入魔 is generally neutral.