很
hěn
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Very, quite — an adverb placed before an adjective or a verb of feeling. An adjective needs no 是 'to be' in Chinese, but alone it sounds incomplete, so 很 usually stands before it and then adds little force: 她很高兴 is simply 'she is happy'. With verbs of feeling it keeps its meaning: 很喜欢 'to like very much'.
Phó từ chỉ mức độ: rất, lắm. Đứng trước tính từ hoặc động từ chỉ cảm xúc: 很好 (rất tốt), 很喜欢 (rất thích). Cũng như tiếng Việt, câu có vị ngữ là tính từ không cần 是 (là), nhưng tiếng Trung thường thêm 很 vào trước tính từ cho tròn câu, lúc ấy nghĩa “rất” khá nhẹ: 她很高兴 chỉ là “cô ấy vui”.
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 “很” mean?
Very, quite — an adverb placed before an adjective or a verb of feeling. An adjective needs no 是 'to be' in Chinese, but alone it sounds incomplete, so 很 usually stands before it and then adds little force: 她很高兴 is simply 'she is happy'. With verbs of feeling it keeps its meaning: 很喜欢 'to like very much'.
Is “很” formal or informal?
很 is generally neutral.