phụ công
Definition
- 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.)