DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

私

Mandarin · pinyin sī

(bound form) personal; private
(bound form) selfish
(bound form) clandestine
(bound form) illicit
(Internet slang) to send a private message to sb

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Characters in this entry

私: sī · private, personal; secret

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

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Mandarin tones

1 · si1

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1character link44same-tone records

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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.

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

si1

Cantonese word readings for 私. 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.

character

self; personal; private
selfish
(Classical, humble) first-person singular pronoun: I; me
illegal or secret goods
stealthily; secretly
(obsolete) Used by women to refer to their sister's husband
reproductive organs; genitals
(Internet slang) short for 私聊 (sīliáo, “to PM, to DM”)

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

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