nho lại
Definition
- Noun (historical):
- Clerk: A minor official or scribe working in the administrative offices of a district-level mandarin in feudal Vietnam. The term refers to a literate person who handled documents, records, and routine bureaucratic tasks.
Usage Examples
- Noun:
- Ông tổ của gia đình tôi từng làm một viên nho lại. (My family's ancestor once worked as a clerk.)
- Công việc của các nho lại là ghi chép sổ sách. (The work of the clerks was to keep records and ledgers.)
Advanced Usage
- The term "nho lại" is now considered archaic and is primarily used in historical or literary contexts to describe the pre-modern Vietnamese bureaucratic system.
Variants and Related Words
- Lại mục (n): A category of low-ranking mandarinal officials or clerks, often grouped with "nho lại".
- Thư lại (n): Another historical term for a scribe or clerk.
Synonyms
- Scribe: A person who copies out documents.
- Minor official: A lower-level administrative worker.
- Bureaucrat: An official in a government department.
Notes on Usage
- The word is marked as "cũ" (old) or "arch." (archaic) in dictionaries, indicating it is obsolete in modern language and used only when referring to the past.
- It specifically denotes a person educated in the Confucian classics ("nho") who performed clerical ("lại") duties, reflecting the scholar-based administration of the time.
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(cũ) Clerk
