Chinese · Word Attested HSK 1

生病

shēng bìng

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To fall ill, to get sick; also to be ill. It is a verb plus its object, so 了 usually follows it: 我生病了 'I'm ill'. The two parts can also separate: 生了病 'fell ill'.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Bị ốm, bị bệnh, đổ bệnh; cũng dùng khi đang ốm. Là động từ kèm tân ngữ (生 + 病), nên 了 hay đứng sau: 我生病了 (tôi bị ốm rồi); hai phần cũng có thể tách ra: 生了病 (đã bị bệnh).

Literally: produce illness

VerbRegister: neutral

Examples

小王生病了，今天没来上课。Xiǎo Wáng shēngbìng le, jīntiān méi lái shàngkè.Xiao Wang is ill and didn't come to class today.

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 ↗ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “sinh bệnh” (sinh-benh). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.

Equivalents & related

Hán-Việt cognate sinh bệnh (verb) to cause an illness; to fall ill Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “生病” mean?

To fall ill, to get sick; also to be ill. It is a verb plus its object, so 了 usually follows it: 我生病了 'I'm ill'. The two parts can also separate: 生了病 'fell ill'. Literally: produce illness

Is “生病” formal or informal?

生病 is generally neutral.

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