吃
chī
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
To eat: to have food or a meal. The food comes straight after the verb. With no particular food in mind, Chinese still names an object, 饭 'cooked rice, a meal': 吃饭 is simply 'to eat'. Medicine is 'eaten' too: 吃药 'to take medicine'.
Ăn: ăn một món gì, dùng bữa. Món ăn đặt ngay sau động từ. Khi không nói rõ ăn gì, tiếng Trung vẫn thêm tân ngữ 饭 (cơm): 吃饭 là “ăn cơm”, tức ăn nói chung, giống hệt tiếng Việt. Thuốc thì tiếng Trung cũng “ăn”: 吃药 (uống thuốc).
VerbRegister: 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 ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 吃 = cật · 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 “吃” mean?
To eat: to have food or a meal. The food comes straight after the verb. With no particular food in mind, Chinese still names an object, 饭 'cooked rice, a meal': 吃饭 is simply 'to eat'. Medicine is 'eaten' too: 吃药 'to take medicine'.
Is “吃” formal or informal?
吃 is generally neutral.