Making things easier to find and learn

The index for the dictionary below is designed to make Chinese characters easier to lookup (particularly for foreigners and anyone else not familiar with Chinese characters.)

Chinese Dictionaries

Using the character shape index

To find 腸:
We can look at the left most shape 月 which in turn is under the 冂 shape group. Because this shape includes a large group of characters we can refine our search. 昜, the second part of 腸, has the shape 日 at the top which is under the 口 sub-grouping within the 月 shape.

口: 肥 腮 臊 胛 腥 <<
冂: 肌 服 股
凵: 脂

To find 麵:
We can look at the left most shape 麥 which in turn is under the 十 shape group. Looking at the 十 shape, there are a number of variations grouped together, i.e.:

十: 十 博 協 南 索
支: 支 翅
直: 直
真: 真 顛
耂: 考
孝: 孝 教
老: 老 耆
者: 者 都 煮
卉: 卉
古: 古 故 辜
胡: 胡
克: 克 剋
孛: 勃
麥: 麥 麴 麩 <<
龺: 朝 翰 乾 幹 韓.

To find 雞:
We can look at the left most shape 奚 which has a 丿 shape at its top. And so we look under the 丿 shape group. Looking at the 爫 shape, there are a number of variations grouped together, i.e.:
爫: 覓 爵 妥 爭 舀 炙 受 愛 乎
采: 采 彩
孚: 乳
奚: 奚 谿 <<
亂: 亂 辭
釆: 悉 釋
番: 番 翻

To find 威:
We can see that it has a 丶 shape at the top. And so we look under the 丶 shape group. Looking at the 弋 shape, there are a number of variations grouped together, i.e.: 弋
弋: 式
戈: 戈 划 戎 戒
戔: 盞
或: 或 惑
戊: 戊 戍
咸: 感
成: 成 盛
戚: 戚 蹙

Word Lookup

On each character page, words are sorted into groups based on character pairs, with the current character either the first character or the last in the pair. So for example, the phrase 速度快得像是糞便通過鵝腸一樣 can be found under the character 腸 (as well as under any other character it contains.) Looking at the Word TOC for 腸, this phrase is listed under the character pair 鵝腸. If the database didn't include the word 鵝腸, then it would have been listed under 腸一, so that the current page character is listed first. These character pairs may or may not be words in their own right. The reason for using them is to group words with the same character combinations together.

In terms of navigation, some links on this website link to different parts of the same page. Others link to different pages. For the most part, boxed with a white background are links to different pages. And so for example, on a character page, the shape and character selection boxes all have a white background while the Word TOC, which links to word groupings on the same page, does not have a white background.

Categories

Words and phrases in any of the category boxes (including the Latest category) include the meaning of the word but not the pronunciation. If you click on the word link, you'll be taken to the word page where you can see its pronunciation. Near the top of the page you'll see a link back to the category section. This will return you to the word within the category section, with the word page just visited highlighted. This ideally makes it easy for you to go through the words in each category in turn. However, if you wish to avoid returning to the page, there is also a next link on the word page that takes you to the next word within the category. (Words in each category are sorted alphabetically by their definition.)

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