开车
kāi chē
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 開車
To drive: to be at the wheel of a car or other vehicle. Its object, 车 'vehicle', is already inside, so 学开车 is simply 'to learn to drive'; where you drive to comes after 去: 开车去超市 'drive to the supermarket'. A passenger does not 开车 but 坐车.
Lái xe: cầm lái ô tô hay một loại xe khác. Tân ngữ 车 (xe) đã nằm sẵn trong từ, nên “học lái xe” chỉ là 学开车; lái xe đi đâu thì thêm 去: 开车去超市 (lái xe đi siêu thị). Người ngồi xe thì không 开车 mà là 坐车.
VerbRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 064 (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 “开车” mean?
To drive: to be at the wheel of a car or other vehicle. Its object, 车 'vehicle', is already inside, so 学开车 is simply 'to learn to drive'; where you drive to comes after 去: 开车去超市 'drive to the supermarket'. A passenger does not 开车 but 坐车. Literally: operate car
Is “开车” formal or informal?
开车 is generally neutral.