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Chinese dictionary

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Through Dictionary, Writing system and Alphabet

Chinese dictionaries have been published for over two millennia, beginning in the Han dynasty. This is the longest lexicographical history of any language. In addition to works for Mandarin Chinese, beginning with the 1st-century CE Fangyan dictionaries also been created for the many varieties of Chinese. One of the most influential Chinese dictionaries ever published was the Kangxi Dictionary, finished in 1716 during the Qing dynasty, with the list of 214 Kangxi radicals it popularized are still widely used.

Terminology

The general term cishu (Chinese: 辭書; pinyin: císhū; lit. 'lexicographic books') semantically encompasses "dictionary; lexicon; encyclopedia; glossary". The Chinese language has two words for dictionary: zidian (character dictionary) for written forms, that is, Chinese characters, and cidian (word/phrase dictionary), for spoken forms.

For character dictionaries, zidian (Chinese: 字典; pinyin: zìdiǎn; Wade–Giles: tzŭ⁴-tien³; lit. 'character dictionary') combines zi (字; "character, graph; letter, script, writing; word") and dian (典 "dictionary, encyclopedia; standard, rule; statute, canon; classical allusion").

For word dictionaries, cidian is interchangeably written (辭典/辞典; cídiǎn; tzʻŭ²-tien³; "word dictionary") or (詞典/词典; cídiǎn; tzʻŭ²-tien³; "word dictionary"); using cí (辭; "word, speech; phrase, expression; diction, phraseology; statement; a kind of poetic prose; depart; decline; resign"), and its graphic variant cí (詞; "word, term; expression, phrase; speech, statement; part of speech; a kind of tonal poetry"). Zidian is a much older and more common word than cidian, and Yang notes zidian is often "used for both 'character dictionary' and 'word dictionary'.

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