男女授受不亲
nán nǚ shòu shòu bù qīn
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 男女授受不親
An old rule of propriety: a man and a woman should not pass things directly from hand to hand, and more broadly should keep apart and avoid touching. Now quoted about old-fashioned manners, often as a joke.
Lễ giáo xưa quy định trai gái khi trao nhận đồ vật không được trao tận tay nhau, rộng ra là phải giữ khoảng cách, tránh đụng chạm. Nay thường nhắc khi nói về nếp cũ hoặc để nói đùa.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 062 (2026-11-13). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 女 = nữ; etymology of “nam nữ thụ thụ bất thân” = 男女授受不親 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “nam nữ thụ thụ bất thân” (nam-nu-thu-thu-bat-than). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Lighter cards are two steps away in the meaning graph — equivalents of equivalents, reached via the entry shown on the card.
Common questions
What does “男女授受不亲” mean?
An old rule of propriety: a man and a woman should not pass things directly from hand to hand, and more broadly should keep apart and avoid touching. Now quoted about old-fashioned manners, often as a joke. Literally: men and women give and receive without touching
Is “男女授受不亲” formal or informal?
男女授受不亲 is generally neutral.