菜
cài
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Vegetables, and also a dish: any cooked food eaten with rice. 买菜 is shopping for food at the market, not only vegetables; 中国菜 is Chinese food, and 做菜 is to cook. In a restaurant you 点菜, 'order dishes'.
Rau, và cũng là món ăn: thức ăn nấu chín ăn kèm với cơm. 买菜 là đi chợ mua thức ăn nói chung, không chỉ mua rau; 中国菜 là món ăn Trung Quốc, 做菜 là nấu ăn. Vào nhà hàng thì 点菜 (gọi món).
NounRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 064 (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 “菜” mean?
Vegetables, and also a dish: any cooked food eaten with rice. 买菜 is shopping for food at the market, not only vegetables; 中国菜 is Chinese food, and 做菜 is to cook. In a restaurant you 点菜, 'order dishes'.
Is “菜” formal or informal?
菜 is generally neutral.