"Out of fish sauce"!

“Hét nước mắm” is normally just a free combination (not a fixed word combination, nor an idiom or colloquial expression) in Vietnamese. “Hét nước mắm” refers to a situation where “the dipping sauce (such as fish sauce, soy sauce/soy sauce) in the meal is gone”.

That matter is really “small as a rabbit”. Because there are much bigger and more worrying “runs”, like running out of money, running out of rice, running out of firewood, running out of gasoline… During a meal, if you “run out of dipping sauce”, you can pour more or buy more if you need it!

But this combination has become a "hot trend" idiom among the "gen Z" youth. In terms of form, we see that this combination also has the familiar "het + X" structure of the Vietnamese language. Many words (according to this structure) are already in the Vietnamese Dictionary (Hoang Phe, editor-in-chief, Da Nang Publishing House, 2020), for example:

completely gone. [kng] completely gone, as if cleaned out until there was nothing left. [Example: “All the money was gone; The pot of porridge that everyone had eaten was half full and gone” - Kim Lan). (In Vietnamese, there is also an idiom “all the garlic” which means “completely gone, nothing left”).

Out of water p. [kng], exhausted all ways, all possibilities, there can be no other way. (Example: "I said out of water but it still won't listen; Think carefully, if you're going to calculate, calculate until the end..." - Dao Vu).

Extremely p. to the highest level, no more possible. (Example: "Instead of walking quickly, I walked step by step very slowly" - Doan Gioi).

When you're out of water and out of things [to do something], you can't do anything more. (Example: "People have said you're out of water and out of things, but you still insist" - Ma Van Khang).

Thus, the general meaning of words in this structure refers to a situation whose development has reached its limit, its potential is exhausted, it cannot go any further (generally not good).

Gen Z also uses this meaning for their idiom “out of dipping sauce”. For example, someone goes to a restaurant and orders a bowl of pho without onions, but the owner puts both onions and scallions in the bowl, the whole bowl is onions. So they throw their hands up in the air and exclaim: “Out of dipping sauce!” (I give up! There’s nothing left to say!).

But most of the current usage of “hặt nước mắm” by young people has a positive connotation, that is, in the direction of praise. When a girl wears a bikini showing off her “hot” curves, everyone exclaims: “So beautiful!”. Or when listening to a new and strange song, one must be moved, someone slaps their thigh and exclaims: “This song is so good!”. Or a beautiful young girl, dressed and made up in the right fashion, is praised by her boyfriend with a “heart”: “So stylish!”…

In the movie Life is Still Beautiful currently being shown on VTV, the character Luu (played by Hoang Hai) made the audience extremely excited when he used the combination "out of sauce" in his dialogue more than once: "This guy has no hometown or relatives, but has a son who is out of sauce. He will rise up, unlike his father"; "My parents are very proud to have given birth to a son who is out of sauce"...

Young musician Long Tho Huynh even composed a song titled "Het nuoc dip" and was performed impressively by singer Ho Viet Trung with the lyrical lyrics: "The more I look at you, the more I feel the rice rolls" and "If we come back together/ We will run out of dipping sauce, and dipping sauce means we will run out of fish sauce".

No more water before the dot

I have to count stars before I love you!