Definitions

1. Verb:
   • To gather in a group for frivolous or disreputable activities: This verb specifically describes the act of forming a small, often secretive or disapproved-of group to engage in activities like gambling, excessive drinking, or idle pastimes. It carries a negative connotation of wasting time or engaging in vice.
   • To gang up (in a petty or mischievous sense): It implies conspiring or teaming up for trivial, mischievous, or socially frowned-upon purposes, not for serious or productive collaboration.

Usage Examples

• Verb:
  • Mấy thanh niên ấy suốt ngày chỉ biết đàn đúm nhau đi cờ bạc. (Those young men spend all their time just ganging up to go gambling.)
  • Bọn trẻ hay đàn đúm sau nhà kho để hút thuốc. (The kids often gather in a group behind the warehouse to smoke.)
  • Anh ta không làm ăn gì, chỉ thích đàn đúm với bạn bè nhậu nhẹt. (He doesn't do any work, he just likes hanging out with friends drinking.)

Advanced Usage

• "Đánh đàn đánh đúm": This is a fixed, rhyming phrase that intensifies the meaning, strongly emphasizing the act of forming groups for gambling or other vices.
  • Cả làng biết hắn chuyên đi đánh đàn đánh đúm. (The whole village knows he specializes in ganging up for gambling.)

Variants and Related Words

• Đúm (n, rare): This is the second element of the compound. While rarely used alone in modern Vietnamese, it contributes the sense of a "small group" or "cluster" to the word đàn đúm.
• Tụ tập (v): To gather, assemble. This is a more neutral term for gathering, without the inherent negative connotation of đàn đúm.
• Quần tụ (v, literary): To flock together, to congregate.

Synonyms

• Tụm năm tụm ba: To gather in threes and fives (idiom for gathering in small groups, often with a slightly negative nuance).
• Bầy đàn (v, often derogatory): To flock together like animals (implies an unruly or base group).

Related Phrases (Phrasal Verbs)

• Đàn đúm với nhau: To gang up/hang out with each other (emphasizes the reciprocal action within the group).
  • Chúng nó cứ đàn đúm với nhau là xảy ra chuyện. (Whenever they gang up together, trouble happens.)

Related Idioms

• Đàn đúm ăn chơi: To gang up and indulge in revelry/pleasure-seeking. This idiom explicitly links the act of gathering with hedonistic activities.
  • Hắn bỏ bê công việc, suốt ngày đàn đúm ăn chơi. (He neglects his work, spending all day carousing with his gang.)

1. Gang up (for gambling, dringking...)
   • Đánh đàn đánh đúm
     To gang in small groups and gamble