| Chinese Text Project |
Character dictionary
The character dictionary pages on this site display three main types of data: basic character information, classical Chinese words and usages, and character usage examples. Please note that not all information is available for all characters.
Character information
Character entries in the dictionary display some or all of the following fields:
Radical
The Kangxi radical assigned to the character. See the main dictionary page for a list of radicals. Also given are the number of strokes in addition to those of the radical required to write the character, and the total number of strokes including the radical.
Dictionary references
Hanyu - The position of this character in the Hanyu Da Zidian Chinese character dictionary.
Kangxi - The position of this character in the KangXi dictionary. Greyed out entries indicate characters which do not appear in the KangXi dictionary and give the position at which they should appear if they were contained in it. The edition of the KangXi dictionary used is the 7th edition published by Zhonghua Bookstore in Beijing, 1989.
Cihai - The position of this character in the Cihai (辭海) dictionary, single volume edition, published in Hong Kong by the Zhonghua Bookstore, 1983 (reprint of the 1947 edition), ISBN 962-231-005-2. The position is indicated by page, row, and column.
GSR - The position of this character in Bernhard Karlgren's Grammata Serica Recensa (1957). Position is given by entry number and label.
Mandarin
The Mandarin pronunciation(s) for this character using the pinyin romanization.
Cantonese
The Cantonese pronunciation(s) for this character using the jyutping romanization.
Tang
The Tang dynasty pronunciation(s) of this character, derived from or consistent with "T'ang Poetic Vocabulary" by Hugh M. Stimson, Far Eastern Publications, Yale Univ. 1976.
Meaning
An English definition for this character as used in modern written Chinese.
Classical Chinese words and usages
The "CTP dictionary" is a dictionary of classical Chinese word usage. Each distinct usage of a character or word is displayed together with pronunciation, a Chinese and English description of the usage, and a list of at most five occurences of the specific usage.
Click on the ![[more]](more.gif)
icon beside an example occurrence to display the quoted text in context.
If five occurrences are displayed, there may be more examples of usage available; click on the icon to the right of the definition to display more examples; clicking again on the icon from the following page will search the database for all occurrences known to the system. If desired, the search can then be customized by clicking on "Edit search" to further refine the displayed examples.
Certain words (specifically proper names and characters used as rebus characters) are considered equivalent by the system. To see a full list of equivalent usages (i.e. coextensive proper names or equivalent rebus characters), click on the icon to the right of the definition to display more examples; if there are known equivalent usages, this page will contain a line headed "See also" beneath the examples, with a list of equivalent usages. Clicking again on the icon beside these usages will search the database for all occurrences of all equivalent usages known to the system. If desired, the search can then be customized by clicking on "Edit search" to further refine the displayed examples.
Example character usage
Example character usage is generated automatically from the textual database, and as such the specific usage of the character in each context is not specified (it may for example be part of a proper name). A maximum of one example is given from each text. This information is not displayed for characters which have CTP dictionary entries, because the CTP dictionary entries already give classified usage examples. In such cases, if general examples are desired the user can achieve similar results by searching all or part of the CTP database for occurrences of the character.