姐姐
jiě jie
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
An older sister, a sister born before you. A younger sister is 妹妹. The first syllable is a third tone and the second is neutral: jiějie. 大姐 is the eldest sister; 小姐 means 'Miss' or 'young lady'.
Chị gái, người chị lớn tuổi hơn mình. Em gái thì là 妹妹. Âm tiết đầu đọc thanh 3, âm tiết sau đọc thanh nhẹ: jiějie. 大姐 là chị cả; 小姐 là “cô”, “tiểu thư”, dùng để gọi phụ nữ trẻ.
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 “姐姐” mean?
An older sister, a sister born before you. A younger sister is 妹妹. The first syllable is a third tone and the second is neutral: jiějie. 大姐 is the eldest sister; 小姐 means 'Miss' or 'young lady'.
Is “姐姐” formal or informal?
姐姐 is generally neutral.