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你死我活

Mandarin · pinyin nǐ sǐ wǒ huó

lit. you die, I live (idiom); irreconcilable adversaries
two parties cannot coexist

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Characters in this entry

你: nǐ · you, second person pronoun
死: sǐ · die; dead; death
我: wǒ · our, us, i, me, my, we
活: huó · live, exist, survive; lively

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

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Mandarin tones

3–3–3–2 · ni3 si3 wo3 huo2

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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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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

nei5 sei2 ngo5 wut6

Cantonese word readings for 你死我活. 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.

phrase

(idiomatic) irreconcilable adversaries; two parties cannot coexist

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

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