hiền
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Vietnamese
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Sino-Vietnamese word from 賢 (“wise; virtuous”). According to Nguyễn Quốc Hùng's Hán Việt tân từ điển (“New Sino-Vietnamese Dictionary”):
Rất tài giỏi — Có tài năng và đức độ — Tốt đẹp — Không phải là hiền lành theo nghĩa Việt Nam
- Excellent - Highly talented and virtuous - Glorious - Not like hiền lành (“mild-mannered”) in Vietnamese usage
The semantic bleaching from "wise/virtuous" to "mild" probably comes from expressions relating to wifehood and motherhood, such as Chinese 賢母／贤母 (“wise mother”) > Vietnamese mẹ hiền (“kind mother”). Compare phrases such as Chinese 賢妻良母／贤妻良母 (hiền thê lương mẫu, “a wise wife and a good mother”) and Japanese 良妻賢母 (ryōsai kenbo, lương thê hiền mẫu, “a good wife and a wise mother”). This term has compounded with other words and morphemes which did not suffer this kind of semantic bleaching, such as Chinese 慈 (từ) in hiền từ.
Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]hiền
- (archaic) wise, virtuous and respectable
- người hiền ― a person of virtue
- 1909, Luo Guanzhong, translated by Phan Kế Bính, Tam quốc diễn nghĩa [Romance of the Three Kingdoms]:
- Nghe tiếng ngài yêu người hiền, trọng kẻ sĩ, nên tôi cũng đến yết kiến.
- I came to see you for I have heard of your reputable love and respect for the wise and learned.
- (of people, especially women) good-natured
- mẹ/vợ/dâu hiền
- a good mother/wife/daughter-in-law
- gentle; meek; mild; mild-mannered
- (Southern Vietnam) innocuous; harmless; nutritious
- (Southern Vietnam, euphemistic) ingenuous to a fault
- Em hiền quá à! Vậy thì sao có bồ được?
- You're too ingenuous! How would you ever get a girlfriend?