一日为师，终身为父
yī rì wéi shī, zhōng shēn wéi fù
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 一日為師，終身為父
Anyone who has taught you, even just for one day, should be honoured like a father for as long as you live. Quoted to show lasting respect and thankfulness towards a teacher or mentor.
Người đã dạy mình dù chỉ một ngày cũng đáng được kính trọng như cha suốt đời. Thường dẫn ra để nói lên lòng biết ơn và sự tôn kính trọn đời đối với thầy.
Register: neutral
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): Hán-Việt reading 为/為 = vi, 父 = phụ · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “nhất nhật vi sư, chung thân vi phụ” (nhat-nhat-vi-su-chung-than-vi-phu). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “一日为师，终身为父” mean?
Anyone who has taught you, even just for one day, should be honoured like a father for as long as you live. Quoted to show lasting respect and thankfulness towards a teacher or mentor. Literally: one day as teacher, a lifetime as father
Is “一日为师，终身为父” formal or informal?
一日为师，终身为父 is generally neutral.