先生
xiān sheng
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Mr, sir: a polite title for a man. It follows the surname, as in 王先生 'Mr Wang', or stands alone as 'sir'. A woman also says 我先生 for 'my husband'. The titles for a woman are 女士 'Ms' and 小姐 'Miss'. The second syllable has a neutral tone: xiānsheng.
Ông, ngài, anh: từ lịch sự để gọi đàn ông. Đặt sau họ: 王先生 (ông Vương), hoặc dùng một mình như “thưa ông”. Phụ nữ cũng nói 我先生 với nghĩa “chồng tôi”. Với phụ nữ thì dùng 女士 (bà, cô) hoặc 小姐 (cô). Âm tiết thứ hai đọc thanh nhẹ: xiānsheng.
NounRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 063 (2026-11-14). 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 sinh” (tien-sinh). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “先生” mean?
Mr, sir: a polite title for a man. It follows the surname, as in 王先生 'Mr Wang', or stands alone as 'sir'. A woman also says 我先生 for 'my husband'. The titles for a woman are 女士 'Ms' and 小姐 'Miss'. The second syllable has a neutral tone: xiānsheng. Literally: born earlier
Is “先生” formal or informal?
先生 is generally neutral.