不客气
bù kè qi
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 不客氣
You're welcome, don't mention it — the standard reply when someone thanks you. 客气 means polite and formal, the way a guest behaves, so the phrase says there is no need for that. Another common reply is 不用谢 'no need to thank me'. In speech 不 is pronounced bú here, because a fourth tone follows; 气 has a neutral tone.
Câu đáp lại lời cảm ơn: không có gì, đừng khách sáo. 客气 nghĩa là khách sáo, giữ lễ như người khách, nên cả câu có ý “không cần khách sáo”. Cũng có thể đáp 不用谢 (không cần cảm ơn). Khi nói, 不 ở đây đọc thành bú vì đứng trước thanh 4; chữ 气 đọc thanh nhẹ.
InterjectionRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 063 (2026-11-14). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ · No Vietnamese entry is linked as its twin; the Hán-Việt reading is given character by character. Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Common questions
What does “不客气” mean?
You're welcome, don't mention it — the standard reply when someone thanks you. 客气 means polite and formal, the way a guest behaves, so the phrase says there is no need for that. Another common reply is 不用谢 'no need to thank me'. In speech 不 is pronounced bú here, because a fourth tone follows; 气 has a neutral tone. Literally: not acting like a guest
Is “不客气” formal or informal?
不客气 is generally neutral.