都
dōu
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
All, both — an adverb that gathers up everything named before it. It comes after the people or things it covers and right before the verb or adjective: 他们都是老师 'they are all teachers'. As 'all' it can never stand in front of a noun the way the English word does. 都不 means 'none', while 不都 means 'not all'.
Phó từ nghĩa là “đều, cả”. Đứng sau những người hay vật được gộp lại và ngay trước động từ hoặc tính từ, giống “đều” trong tiếng Việt: 他们都是老师 (họ đều là giáo viên). 都不 là “đều không”, còn 不都 là “không phải tất cả đều”.
AdverbRegister: 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 “都” mean?
All, both — an adverb that gathers up everything named before it. It comes after the people or things it covers and right before the verb or adjective: 他们都是老师 'they are all teachers'. As 'all' it can never stand in front of a noun the way the English word does. 都不 means 'none', while 不都 means 'not all'.
Is “都” formal or informal?
都 is generally neutral.