DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

男尊女卑

Mandarin · pinyin nán zūn nǚ bēi

to regard men as superior to women (idiom)

Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

男: nán · male, man; son; baron; surname
尊: zūn · respect, revere, venerate; honor
女: nǚ · woman, girl; feminine; Kangxi radical 38; 10th lunar mansion, determinative star ε Aquarii (Albali)
卑: bēi · humble, low, inferior; despise

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

Explore the spelling

Mandarin tones

2–1–3–1 · nan2 zun1 nu:3 bei1

Compare attested words with these syllables ↗

Dictionary tones. Connected speech can change their realization.

Connected dictionary

4character 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.

男尊女卑 · find source passages ↗

Explore Classical grammar ↗

Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

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

noun

(derogatory) male domination and female subordination; male chauvinism; treatment of females as inferior to males

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

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