Chinese · Idiom Attested

生老病死

shēng lǎo bìng sǐ

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

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Birth, ageing, illness and death: the stages of life that nobody can avoid. Used when speaking calmly or philosophically about mortality; originally a Buddhist term.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Sinh ra, già đi, ốm đau rồi chết: những chặng không ai tránh được của đời người. Dùng khi nói về lẽ vô thường của kiếp người; vốn là khái niệm nhà Phật.

Literally: birth, ageing, sickness, death

Examples

生老病死是每个人都要面对的事。Shēng lǎo bìng sǐ shì měi ge rén dōu yào miànduì de shì.Birth, ageing, illness and death are things everyone has to face.

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 “sinh lão bệnh tử” = 生老病死 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “sinh lão bệnh tử” (sinh-lao-benh-tu). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.

Equivalents & related

Hán-Việt cognate sinh lão bệnh tử (noun) all the stages of a typical human life, suggesting the inevitability of old age, illness and death Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “生老病死” mean?

Birth, ageing, illness and death: the stages of life that nobody can avoid. Used when speaking calmly or philosophically about mortality; originally a Buddhist term. Literally: birth, ageing, sickness, death

Is “生老病死” formal or informal?

生老病死 is generally neutral.

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