青梅竹马
qīng méi zhú mǎ
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 青梅竹馬
Childhood sweethearts: a boy and a girl who grew up playing together. Used as a noun or a description for two people who have known each other since they were small, usually with a romantic hint.
Chỉ đôi trai gái chơi thân với nhau từ thuở nhỏ, thường hàm ý có tình cảm lứa đôi. Có thể dùng như danh từ hoặc lời miêu tả.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 061 (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): etymology of “thanh mai trúc mã” = 青梅竹馬 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “thanh mai trúc mã” (thanh-mai-truc-ma). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “青梅竹马” mean?
Childhood sweethearts: a boy and a girl who grew up playing together. Used as a noun or a description for two people who have known each other since they were small, usually with a romantic hint. Literally: green plums, bamboo horse
Is “青梅竹马” formal or informal?
青梅竹马 is generally neutral.