买
mǎi
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 買
To buy, to pay money for something. 买东西 is 'to buy things, to go shopping'. Its opposite, 卖 mài 'to sell', differs only in tone: third tone to buy, fourth tone to sell. Put together, 买卖 means 'buying and selling, trade'.
Mua: bỏ tiền ra để lấy một món hàng. 买东西 là mua đồ, đi mua sắm. Từ trái nghĩa 卖 mài (bán) chỉ khác ở thanh điệu: thanh 3 là mua, thanh 4 là bán, nghe rất dễ nhầm. Ghép hai chữ lại, 买卖 nghĩa là “mua bán, buôn bán”.
VerbRegister: 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 “买” mean?
To buy, to pay money for something. 买东西 is 'to buy things, to go shopping'. Its opposite, 卖 mài 'to sell', differs only in tone: third tone to buy, fourth tone to sell. Put together, 买卖 means 'buying and selling, trade'.
Is “买” formal or informal?
买 is generally neutral.