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私了

Mandarin · pinyin sī liǎo

to settle privately
to solve behind closed doors
to settle out of court

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Characters in this entry

私: sī · private, personal; secret
了: le · to finish; particle of completed action

Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

1–3 · si1 liao3

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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.

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

si1 liu5

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

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

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

verb

to settle (a matter) privately without involving authorities
(Hong Kong, neologism, slang, of a pro-democracy protester) to extrajudicially punish a perceived opponent (which almost inevitably devolves into violence)

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

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