老师
lǎo shī
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 老師
A teacher, man or woman, at any level from nursery school to university. It is also how you address one: 老师好 'hello, teacher', or with the surname in front, 王老师, literally 'Wang teacher'. 老 here is a prefix of respect and does not mean 'old'.
Giáo viên, thầy giáo hoặc cô giáo, ở bất cứ cấp học nào. Cũng là từ để xưng hô: 老师好 (em chào thầy, em chào cô), hoặc đặt sau họ của người đó: 王老师 (thầy Vương, cô Vương). Chữ 老 ở đây là tiền tố tỏ ý kính trọng, không có nghĩa là “già”.
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 “lão sư” (lao-su). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “老师” mean?
A teacher, man or woman, at any level from nursery school to university. It is also how you address one: 老师好 'hello, teacher', or with the surname in front, 王老师, literally 'Wang teacher'. 老 here is a prefix of respect and does not mean 'old'.
Is “老师” formal or informal?
老师 is generally neutral.