动物
dòng wù
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 動物
An animal — any living creature that can move about by itself, as opposed to a plant. 小动物 are small animals and 野生动物 wild animals; 动物园, literally 'animal garden', is a zoo.
Động vật, con vật: loài sinh vật tự di chuyển được, phân biệt với thực vật. 小动物 là những con vật nhỏ, 野生动物 là động vật hoang dã; 动物园 (nghĩa đen: “vườn động vật”) là vườn thú, sở thú.
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 ↗ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “động vật” (dong-vat). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “动物” mean?
An animal — any living creature that can move about by itself, as opposed to a plant. 小动物 are small animals and 野生动物 wild animals; 动物园, literally 'animal garden', is a zoo. Literally: moving thing
Is “动物” formal or informal?
动物 is generally neutral.