Chinese dictionaries

Chinese character dictionary

2nd century Chinese character dictionary

The Erya or Erh-ya is the first surviving Chinese dictionary. The sinologist Bernhard Karlgren concluded that "the major part of its glosses must reasonably date from the 3rd century BC."

thumb|right|upright=2|The beginning of the first rhyme group of the Guangyun, with first character 東 ("east")

The Qieyun () is a Chinese rhyme dictionary that was published in 601 during the Sui dynasty. The book was a guide to proper reading of classical texts, using the fanqie method to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters. The Qieyun and later redactions, notably the Guangyun, are important documentary sources used in the reconstruction of historical Chinese phonology.

ancient type of Chinese dictionary that collates characters by tone and rhyme

Chinese language dictionary

1st century Chinese dictionary of regional terms

Chinese phrase dictionary

Japanese kanji dictionary

The Jiyun (Chi-yun; ) is a Chinese rime dictionary published in 1037 during the Song dynasty. The chief editor Ding Du (丁度) and others expanded and revised the Guangyun. It is possible, according to Teng and Biggerstaff (1971:147), that Sima Guang completed the text in 1067. The Jiyun has 53,525 character entries (Teng & Biggerstaff, 1971: 147), approximately twice as many as the Guangyun, and likewise has 206 rime groups.

The Cihai is a large-scale dictionary and encyclopedia of Standard Mandarin Chinese. The Zhonghua Book Company published the first Cihai edition in 1938, and the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House revised editions in 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009. A standard bibliography of Chinese reference works calls the Cihai an "outstanding dictionary".

Chinese character dictionary (1986–1989)

The 1615 Zìhuì is a Chinese dictionary edited by the Ming Dynasty scholar Mei Yingzuo (梅膺祚). It is renowned for introducing two lexicographical innovations that continue to be used in the present day: the 214-radical system for indexing Chinese characters, which replaced the classic Shuowen Jiezi dictionary's 540-radical system, and the radical-and-stroke sorting method.

thumb|Ming dynasty 1492 reprint of the Yupian thumb|300px|Vol. 27 of the Yupian in Ishiyama-dera, [[Ōtsu, Japan (facsimile)]] The Yupian (; "Jade Chapters") is a c. 543 Chinese dictionary edited by Gu Yewang (顧野王; Ku Yeh-wang; 519–581) during the Liang dynasty. It arranges 12,158 character entries under 542 radicals, which differ somewhat from the original 540 in the Shuowen Jiezi. Each character entry gives a fanqie pronunciation gloss and a definition, with occasional annotation.

1324 rime book by Zhou Deqing

language version of dictionary

The Jijiupian is a Chinese character primer that was compiled by the Han dynasty scholar Shi You around 40 BCE. Similar to an abecedarium, it contains a series of orthographic word lists, categorized according to character radical, and briefly explained in rhymed lines. In the Qin and Han dynasties, several similar orthographic primers were in circulation, such as Cangjiepian, but the Jijiupian is the only one that survived intact for two millennia.

authoritative one-volume Chinese language dictionary

The Zhengzitong () was a 17th-century Chinese dictionary. The Ming dynasty scholar Zhang Zilie (張自烈; Chang Tzu-lieh) originally published it in 1627 as a supplement to the 1615 Zihui dictionary of Chinese characters, and called it the Zihui bian (字彙辯; "Zihui Disputations"). The Qing dynasty author Liao Wenying (廖文英; Liao Wen-ying) bought Zhang's manuscript, renamed it Zhengzitong, and published it under his own name in 1671.

Chinese rime dictionary

The Shiming, also known as the Yiya, is a Chinese dictionary that employed phonological glosses, and is believed have been composed . Because it records the pronunciation of an Eastern Han Chinese dialect, sinologists have used the Shiming to estimate the dates of sound shifts, such as the loss of consonant clusters that took place between the Old Chinese and Middle Chinese stages.

The Piya (; "Increased [Er]ya") was a Chinese dictionary compiled by Song Dynasty scholar Lu Dian (陸佃/陆佃, 1042–1102). He wrote this Erya supplement along with his Erya Xinyi (爾雅新義 "New Exegesis of the Erya") commentary. Although the Piya preface written by his son Lu Zai (陸宰/陆宰) is dated 1125, the dictionary was written earlier; estimates around the Yuanfeng era (元豐, 1078–1085), and Joseph Needham says around 1096.

thumb|right|upright|The Shuowen Jiezi entry for 'child', showing the small seal script (top right), ancient script (top left), and Zhou script (bottom left) forms. thumb|upright|page=21|A page from a commentary on the work by Wang Guowei The Shizhoupian () is the first known Chinese dictionary, and was written in the ancient large seal script. The work was traditionally dated to the reign of King Xuan of Zhou (827–782 BCE), but many modern scholars assign it to the state of Qin in the Warring States period (221 BCE). The text is no longer fully extant, and it is now known only throug

historical rhyming system for Middle Chinese

book by Bernhard Karlgren

The Shiben or Book of Origins (Chinese: 世本; pinyin: shìběn; ) was an early Chinese encyclopedia which recorded imperial genealogies from the mythical Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors down to the late Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BCE), explanations of the origin of clan names, and records of legendary and historical Chinese inventors. It was written during the 2nd century BC at the time of the Han dynasty. The work was lost in the 10th century, but partially reconstructed from quotations during the Qing dynasty.

18th century dictionary in five languages (Manchu, Tibetan, Mongolian, Chagatai, Chinese)

Chinese–French dictionary

thumb|Spine of the Commercial Press single-volume 1974 edition The Ciyuan or '''''Tz'u-yüan''' was the first major Chinese dictionary linguistically structured around words (ci ) instead of individual characters (zi ) used to write them. The Commercial Press published the first edition Ciyuan'' in 1915, and reissued it in various formats, including a 1931 supplement, and a fully revised 1979–1984 edition. The latest (3rd) edition was issued in 2015 to commemorate the centenary anniversary of its first publication.

Chinese dictionary compiled during the Liao Dynasty by the Khitan monk Xingjun (行均)

chinese-Tangut glossary

2002 compendium edited by Li Rong

Chinese rime dictionary

The (c. 230) Guangya (; "Expanded [Er]ya") was an early 3rd-century CE Chinese dictionary, edited by Zhang Yi (張揖) during the Three Kingdoms period. It was later called the Boya (博雅; Bóyǎ; Po-ya; "Broadened [Er]ya") owing to naming taboo on Yang Guang (楊廣), which was the birth name of Emperor Yang of Sui.

Chinese character dictionary

The Cangjiepian, also known as the Three Chapters (, sāncāng), was a BCE Chinese primer and a prototype for Chinese dictionaries. Li Si, Chancellor of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), compiled it for the purpose of reforming written Chinese into the new orthographic standard Small Seal Script. Beginning in the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 221 CE), many scholars and lexicographers expanded and annotated the Cangjiepian. By the end of the Tang dynasty (618–907), it had become a lost work, but in 1977, archeologists discovered a cache of (c. 165 BCE) texts written on bamboo strips, including fragments of

Chinese dictionary published in Taiwan

The Yunjing is one of the two oldest existing examples of a Chinese rime table – a series of charts which arrange Chinese characters in large tables according to their tone and syllable structures to indicate their proper pronunciations. Current versions of the Yunjing date to AD 1161 and 1203 editions published by Zhang Linzhi (). The original author(s) and date of composition of the Yunjing are unknown. Some of its elements, such as certain choices in its ordering, reflect features particular to the Tang dynasty, but no conclusive proof of an actual date of composition has yet been found.

Chinese exegetical dictionary (c. 583)

The CEDICT project was started by Paul Denisowski in 1997 and is maintained by a team on mdbg.net under the name CC-CEDICT, with the aim to provide a complete Chinese to English dictionary with pronunciation in pinyin for the Chinese characters.