Example sentences
wáng王xiān先shēng生zài在ma吗？
Is Mr. Wang in?
zhè这wèi位xiān先shēng生shì是shuí谁？
Who is this gentleman?
About this word
先 means "first, earlier" and 生 means "born". 先生 is literally "one born earlier", that is, someone older than you. Respect for age turned it into a general honorific for a man, and today it works as "Mr." before a surname: 王先生. It also means "husband", as in 她先生是医生 (her husband is a doctor). In older Chinese 先生 was a respectful term for a teacher or a scholar, and traces of that survive in a few fixed phrases.
The story behind the character
先
止 (a foot) on top, 人 (person) below. A person's foot out in front. That's 先. Xu Shen wrote 先, 前进也: "to go forward."
生
A sprout poking out of the ground: the bottom line is the soil, the rest is the shoot coming up. Xu Shen wrote 生, 进也, 象草木生出土上: "to grow, like a plant breaking the surface." So the 生 in 学生 and 先生 started as a blade of grass sprouting.