太爺

简 太爷 · 繁 太爺
Mandarin · pinyin tài yé

Meanings

  1. (respectful for) one's grandfather
  2. sb's father
  3. older people
  4. the head of the house (used by servants)
  5. a district magistrate
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Characters in this entry

太
tài · very, too, much; big; extreme
爺
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爷
yé · father, grandfather
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–2 · tai4 ye2

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Read this spelling in Classical texts

Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

太爺 · find source passages ↗ · 太爷 · find source passages ↗

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 4 senses · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

taai3 je4

Cantonese word readings for 太爺. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

CanCLID contributors · CC BY 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

noun

  1. paternal grandfather
  2. head of the house (used by servants)
  3. district magistrate
  4. (dialectal) paternal great-grandfather (the father of one's paternal grandfather)

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

太爺 · tai4 ye2
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 29,121
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record太爺 太爷 [tai4 ye2] /(respectful for) one's grandfather/sb's father/older people/the head of the house (used by servants)/a district magistrate/