先生
Meanings
- (used before a man's family name) Mr.
About these definitions
Source definition segments, in their original order. Characters a definition cites are shown without their Mandarin pinyin; classifier lists that CC-Canto copied from CC-CEDICT are marked Mandarin. The community dictionary is not independently verified by zimai.
Reading & tones
Schematic citation-tone diagrams from the source numbers. These are not recordings or predictions of connected speech.
Reading difference from Unihan
- 生 has the reading saang1 here; Unihan’s citation reading is sang1. Different syllable across these source readings. CC-Canto also lists 生 saang1 as its own entry.
Computed by zimai: each syllable of the CC-Canto word reading is compared with Unihan 17.0.0 kCantonese for its character. The comparison does not say why a reading differs (a changed tone, 變音, a reading tied to one meaning, or a source variant).
Same syllable, six tones
Characters whose customary Unihan reading (kCantonese) is this syllable in each tone, chosen as in the tone atlas (2013 standard level, then the number of CC-CEDICT words they form), with CC-Canto 2017's meaning for that reading; a dash means no catalogue character has that reading. Checked syllables (-p, -t, -k) normally carry tones 1, 3 and 6. Character readings, not word readings; no frequency implied.
Written characters
Both source spellings are represented. Written membership is not an etymological or semantic claim.
Mandarin comparison · separate source entries
CC-CEDICT, the Mandarin–English dictionary, lists the same written form:
- 先生 xiān sheng CC-CEDICT · Mandarinteacher; gentleman; sir; mister (Mr.); husband; (dialect) doctor; Classifier: 位 wèi
A separate source entry, shown for comparison. The same characters can carry different senses in Mandarin and in Cantonese; zimai does not align these senses.
CC-Canto includes this pinyin reference: xian1 sheng5. It does not establish a Mandarin word with the same meaning.
Look up this spelling in the Mandarin dictionary ↗Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 13 senses · 1 Cantonese reading
Rime Cantonese 粵拼
sin1 saang1
Cantonese word readings for 先生. 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
- mister; sir; gentleman
- husband
- An honorific for a person of virtue, learning, or ability (usually conferred on males).
- (honorific in Mandarin, Jin; common in Cantonese, Gan, Hakka, Min) teacher
- (dated) Usually placed after a profession of fortune-telling, storytelling, face reading, feng shui, or something similar.
- (dated) bookkeeper
- (Gan, Hakka, Min, dated in Mandarin and Jin) doctor
- (Gan, Hakka, Min, dated in Mandarin and Jin) doctor — (dialectal) traditional Chinese medicine physician
- (literary) scholar; intellectual; man of letters
- (literary) Taoist priest
- (literary) senior family member, especially one's father or elder brother
- (obsolete or Wu) female prostitute
- (literal, Classical) one who was born earlier
Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history
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