老师
Meaning
- teacher
Example sentence
我是老师。
I am a teacher.
Characters in 老师
- 老 lǎo prefix used before the surname of a person or a numeral indicating the order of birth of the children in a family or to indicate affection or familiarity
- 师 shī teacher, master; an expert in a craft
老 here is respect, not age — a 老师 can be twenty-five. 师 is a master of a craft, the same character as in 工程师 engineer, so the word sits closer to honoured master than to old teacher.