士农工商
shì nóng gōng shāng
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 士農工商
The four classes of traditional Chinese society in their old order of rank: scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants. Used when describing the old social order, or loosely for people of every trade.
Bốn tầng lớp của xã hội xưa, xếp theo thứ bậc cũ: kẻ sĩ, nhà nông, thợ thủ công và người buôn bán. Dùng khi nói về trật tự xã hội thời phong kiến, hoặc để chỉ chung mọi ngành nghề.
Register: formal
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): etymology of “sĩ nông công thương” = 士農工商 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “sĩ nông công thương” (si-nong-cong-thuong). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “士农工商” mean?
The four classes of traditional Chinese society in their old order of rank: scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants. Used when describing the old social order, or loosely for people of every trade. Literally: scholars, farmers, artisans, merchants
Is “士农工商” formal or informal?
士农工商 is generally formal.