喂
wèi
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
'Hello?' when you pick up or make a phone call, and 'hey!' to get someone's attention. On the phone it is usually said with a rising tone, wéi. Called out to a stranger it can sound rude; 请问 is the polite opener. The same character also means 'to feed', as in feeding a pet or a baby.
“A lô”: tiếng đầu tiên khi nghe hoặc gọi điện thoại; cũng là tiếng “này!” để gọi ai đó. Trên điện thoại thường được đọc lên giọng thành wéi. Gọi người lạ bằng 喂 có thể nghe cộc lốc; lịch sự hơn thì nói 请问. Chữ này còn là động từ “cho ăn” (cho con vật, em bé ăn).
InterjectionRegister: 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 ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 喂 = uy · 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 “喂” mean?
'Hello?' when you pick up or make a phone call, and 'hey!' to get someone's attention. On the phone it is usually said with a rising tone, wéi. Called out to a stranger it can sound rude; 请问 is the polite opener. The same character also means 'to feed', as in feeding a pet or a baby.
Is “喂” formal or informal?
喂 is generally neutral.