DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

三人行，必有我師

简三人行，必有我师 · 繁三人行，必有我師

Mandarin · pinyin sān rén xíng , bì yǒu wǒ shī

lit. if three walk together, one can be my teacher (idiom, from the Analects of Confucius)
you have sth to learn from everyone

Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

三: sān · three
人: rén · man; people; mankind; someone else
行: xíng · go; walk; move, travel; circulate; Kangxi radical 144
必: bì · surely, most certainly; must
有: yǒu · have, own, possess; exist
我: wǒ · our, us, i, me, my, we
師: shī · teacher, master, specialist; multitude, troops; hexagram ䷆
师: shī · teacher, master, specialist

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

Explore the spelling

Connected dictionary

8character links

Explore word families ↗Compare pronunciations ↗Open character structure ↗

Counts describe dictionary records, not word frequency or semantic similarity. Source identities stay separate.

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.

三人行，必有我師 · find source passages ↗ · 三人行，必有我师 · find source passages ↗

Explore Classical grammar ↗