Chinese · Idiom Attested

先来后到

xiān lái hòu dào

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

Traditional: 先來後到

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

The order in which people arrive: whoever comes first is served or chosen first. Said when reminding people to wait their turn, typically in a queue.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Thứ tự đến trước đến sau: ai đến trước thì được trước. Thường nói để nhắc người khác tôn trọng thứ tự, điển hình là khi xếp hàng.

Literally: those who came first, those who arrived after

Examples

大家都在排队，总得有个先来后到吧。Dàjiā dōu zài páiduì, zǒngděi yǒu ge xiān lái hòu dào ba.Everyone is queuing; surely those who got here first should go first.

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 ↗ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tiên lai hậu đáo” (tien-lai-hau-dao). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.

Equivalents & related

Hán-Việt cognate tiên lai hậu đáo First come, then arrived — precedence by order of appearance; the queue as law. Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “先来后到” mean?

The order in which people arrive: whoever comes first is served or chosen first. Said when reminding people to wait their turn, typically in a queue. Literally: those who came first, those who arrived after

Is “先来后到” formal or informal?

先来后到 is generally neutral.

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