Zhongwen Da Cidian

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The Zhongwen Da Cidian (simplified Chinese: 中文大辞典; traditional Chinese: 中文大辭典; pinyin: Zhōngwén dà cídiǎn; Wade-Giles: Chung-wen ta tz'u-tien; literally '"Comprehensive Dictionary of the Chinese Language") is an unabridged Chinese dictionary, edited by Zhang Qiyun (張其昀; Chang Ch'i-yun; 1901-1985) and others. The first edition had 40 volumes, which were published from 1962 through 1968.

This encyclopedic dictionary includes 49,905 Chinese characters arranged under the traditional 214 Kangxi radicals. Each character entry shows the evolution of graphic forms (such as small seal script), gives pronunciations, and chronological meanings with sources. Words, phrases, and four-character idioms are given under the head character entry, arranged according to the number of strokes in their components. "There are many phrases under some characters," note Teng and Biggerstaff (1971:133), for example, 3,417 under yi (一 "one") and 1,398 under huang (黄 "yellow").

Although the Zhongwen Da Cidian closely resembles the first edition 1960 Dai Kan-Wa jiten ("Comprehensive Chinese-Japanese Dictionary"), it is not listed under works consulted. The Zhongwen Da Cidian was the best available reference work of Chinese until 1993, when the Hanyu Da Cidian ("Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese") was completed.

[edit] See also

• Dai Kan-Wa jiten
• Hanyu Da Cidian
• Hanyu Da Zidian

[edit] References

• Teng, Ssu-yü and Biggerstaff, Knight. 1971. An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Chinese Reference Works, 3rd ed. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-03851-7
• Zhongwen da cidian bianzuan weiyuanhui (中文大辭典編纂委員會).1962-1968. Zhongwen da cidian (中文大辭典). 40 vols. Taibei: Zhongguo wenhua yanjiusuo (中國文化研究所). 1973. Rev. ed., 10 vols.