Dictionary Help

Understanding basic search results

The www.chinesenotes.com dictionary has lots of useful information about Chinese words. In this section some of the basic information returned is explained.

Let's look at an example. Try looking up the Chinese word 不過 (or simplified 不过). A screen shot is shown below.

Screenshot of word with multiple senses
Screenshot of word with multiple senses

The Chinese text returned in large text with the simplified Chinese text first. If the traditional text is different then it will be shown in parentheses. In this csae there are multiple word senses, so each are listed below.

The pinyin and part of speech for each sense is shown followed by one or more English equivalents. The domain label 'Modern Chinese' is shown below that. This is useful to distinguish between modern Chinese and literary Chinese 文言文 (also sometimes known as 古文 'classical Chinese') or other specialized terminology.

There are also some notes that give more information about the word and indicate which reference dictionaries were used to check the definition. These use a system of Abbreviations.