"We're out of dipping sauce!"

"Out of dipping sauce" is normally just a free combination (not a fixed phrase, nor an idiom or colloquialism) in Vietnamese. "Out of dipping sauce" refers to a situation where "the dipping sauce (such as fish sauce, soy sauce) at a meal is no longer available."

That's a trivial matter. Because there are much bigger and more important things to worry about when you run out of money, rice, firewood, or gasoline... If you run out of dipping sauce at a meal, just pour more or buy more if needed!

But this combination has become a "hot trend" idiom among Gen Z youth. In form, this combination also has the familiar "end + X" structure of standard Vietnamese. Many words (following this structure) are already included in the Vietnamese Dictionary (edited by Hoang Phe, Da Nang Publishing House, 2020), for example:

completely gone. [colloquial] completely gone, as if everything has been emptied out, leaving nothing at all. [Example: "Completely out of money; The watery bowl of porridge, which everyone could only eat half a bowl of, was completely empty" - Kim Lân). (Vietnamese also has the idiom "completely out of garlic" which refers to the state of "being completely empty, with nothing left").

" All options have been exhausted [informal], having exhausted all possibilities, there is no other way. (Example: "Even after saying all options have been exhausted, he still refuses; Think carefully, if you're going to calculate, calculate everything thoroughly…" - Dao Vu).

To the utmost , to the highest degree, beyond measure. (For example: "Instead of walking quickly, I walked one step at a time, extremely slowly" - Doan Gioi).

Having exhausted all options [kng] [to do something], there's no more that can be done. (Example: "People have said there's nothing more to be done, but he still insists" - Ma Van Khang).

Thus, the general meaning of words following this structure refers to a situation where its development has reached its limit, is beyond possibility, and cannot be improved further (generally speaking, it's not good).

Gen Z also utilizes this meaning in their idiom "no more dipping sauce." For example, someone goes to a restaurant and orders a bowl of pho without onions, but the owner puts in both onions and shallots, filling the whole bowl with onions. They then raise both hands to the sky and exclaim, "No more dipping sauce!" (Speechless! There's nothing more to say!).

However, most of the ways young people use the phrase "out of dipping sauce" today carry a positive meaning, that is, a tendency towards praise. When a girl in a bikini shows off her "stunning" curves, everyone exclaims: "She's gorgeous beyond words!" Or when they hear a new and unique song and are moved, some people slap their thighs and exclaim: "This music is amazing beyond words!" Or when a young, beautiful girl, dressed and made up in the latest fashion, receives a thumbs-up from her boyfriend: "She's incredibly stylish beyond words!"...

In the TV series "Life Is Still Beautiful," currently airing on VTV, the character Luu (played by Hoang Hai) has delighted viewers with his frequent use of the phrase "out of sauce" in his dialogue: "This guy has no hometown or relatives, but he has a son who's out of sauce. He'll rise up, unlike his father"; "His parents are very proud to have given birth to such a great son who's out of sauce..."

Even young musician Long Tho Huynh composed a song titled "Out of Dipping Sauce," which was impressively performed by singer Ho Viet Trung with catchy lyrics: "The more I look at you, the more I feel like the spring rolls are too much" and "If we two are together / The dipping sauce will be gone, and dipping will be all the fish sauce."

The water ran out before I even dipped it in.

I'm already counting stars before I even fall in love with him!