上
shàng
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Up, above, on: the position higher than something or on its surface. Chinese puts it after the noun, so 桌子上 'on the table' is literally 'table on'. Before 个 and a time word it means 'last': 上个月 'last month'. As a verb it means to go up or get on (上车) and to attend, as in 上课 'have class' and 上班 'go to work'.
Trên, phía trên, ở trên mặt một vật. Đứng sau danh từ, ngược với tiếng Việt: 桌子上 là “trên bàn”, 椅子上 là “trên ghế”. Trước 个 và từ chỉ thời gian thì nghĩa là “trước”: 上个月 (tháng trước). Làm động từ: lên (上车: lên xe), đi học, đi làm (上课, 上班).
NounRegister: 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 “上” mean?
Up, above, on: the position higher than something or on its surface. Chinese puts it after the noun, so 桌子上 'on the table' is literally 'table on'. Before 个 and a time word it means 'last': 上个月 'last month'. As a verb it means to go up or get on (上车) and to attend, as in 上课 'have class' and 上班 'go to work'.
Is “上” formal or informal?
上 is generally neutral.