外
wài
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Outside, out; also foreign, from another country. After a noun it means 'outside': 车外 'outside the car'. In everyday speech it mostly appears inside longer words: 外边 'outside', 外国 'a foreign country', 外国人 'a foreigner'.
Ngoài, bên ngoài; cũng có nghĩa là của nước ngoài. Sau danh từ nghĩa là “bên ngoài”: 车外 (ngoài xe). Trong khẩu ngữ thường nằm trong từ ghép: 外边 (bên ngoài), 外国 (nước ngoài), 外国人 (người nước ngoài).
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 “外” mean?
Outside, out; also foreign, from another country. After a noun it means 'outside': 车外 'outside the car'. In everyday speech it mostly appears inside longer words: 外边 'outside', 外国 'a foreign country', 外国人 'a foreigner'.
Is “外” formal or informal?
外 is generally neutral.