Definition

1. Verb phrase:
   • To waste someone's effort / to render someone's work futile: To cause the work, care, or effort someone has invested in you or for you to be in vain or to go unrewarded. It implies a sense of ingratitude or failure to live up to the expectations created by that effort.

Usage Examples

• Verb phrase:
  • Nếu con không chăm chỉ, sẽ phụ công cha mẹ. (If you are not diligent, you will waste your parents' effort.)
  • Cô ấy lo lắng rằng kết quả thi sẽ phụ công thầy cô đã dạy dỗ. (She worries that her exam results will render her teachers' instruction futile.)
  • Thất bại này phụ công cả đội đã cố gắng. (This failure wastes the effort the whole team has put in.)

Advanced Usage

• The phrase often carries a strong emotional and moral weight, expressing disappointment or a breach of expected reciprocity. It is commonly used in contexts of mentorship, parenting, teaching, and teamwork.

Variants and Related Words

• Phụ lòng (verb phrase): to betray someone's trust or goodwill; to let someone down emotionally.
  • Anh ta phụ lòng tin của mọi người. (He betrayed everyone's trust.)

Synonyms

• To let down: to fail to support or help someone as they had hoped.
• To betray (someone's effort): to be disloyal to the work someone invested.
• To be ungrateful for (someone's work): to not show appreciation for the effort expended.

Related Idioms

• Phụ công cha mẹ: to waste the effort of one's parents (a common, specific usage highlighting filial ingratitude).

  • Học hành lười biếng là phụ công cha mẹ. (Being lazy in your studies is to waste your parents' effort.)

• Phụ công dạy dỗ: to waste the teaching effort of an instructor.

  • Sinh viên ấy không muốn phụ công dạy dỗ của giáo sư. (That student does not want to render the professor's teaching futile.)