东西
dōng xi
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 東西
A thing, stuff: any object you do not name. 买东西 is 'to buy things', that is, to go shopping; 吃东西 is 'to eat something'. The second syllable is neutral: dōngxi. Said with a full first tone, dōngxī, the same characters mean 'east and west'. For an abstract 'thing', a matter, say 事情.
Đồ, đồ vật, thứ: chỉ chung mọi vật mà không gọi tên cụ thể. 买东西 là mua đồ, đi mua sắm; 吃东西 là ăn gì đó. Âm tiết thứ hai đọc thanh nhẹ: dōngxi. Nếu đọc đủ thanh 1 (dōngxī) thì lại là “đông và tây”. Còn “việc”, “chuyện” thì nói 事情.
NounRegister: 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 “东西” mean?
A thing, stuff: any object you do not name. 买东西 is 'to buy things', that is, to go shopping; 吃东西 is 'to eat something'. The second syllable is neutral: dōngxi. Said with a full first tone, dōngxī, the same characters mean 'east and west'. For an abstract 'thing', a matter, say 事情. Literally: east west
Is “东西” formal or informal?
东西 is generally neutral.