佬(lǎo) - bloke, fellow, guy (often dismissive) in Mandarin

佬 (lǎo) is a suffix meaning bloke, and in Mandarin it almost never stands alone. It rides on the end of a description to make a person of that kind: 阔佬 a rich bloke, 乡巴佬 a country bumpkin, 大佬 a big shot or gang boss.

The tone it carries is usually rough, sometimes affectionate, and never neutral. Nationality words built with it are outright slurs and are best recognised rather than used. 大佬 is the friendliest of the family, and even that belongs to films and banter rather than the office.

The trap comes from Cantonese, where 佬 is an ordinary word for a man and 差佬, 肥佬 and the rest are everyday speech. Learners who pick it up in Guangzhou or Hong Kong and carry it north will land much harder than they meant to. In Mandarin, the plain words are 男人 and 家伙.