Searching the Chinese dictionary

Searching

Type characters, pinyin or English. Pinyin works with tone marks, with tone numbers or without tones, and with or without spaces: zhōngguó, zhong1guo2 and zhongguo all find 中国. Simplified and traditional characters both work, and results are shown in the script chosen in your settings. A search matches the start of a form, a reading or a meaning: xue finds 学 and 学习.

Quotes ask for an exact match. * stands for any number of characters and ? for exactly one.

Exact matches come first. After them, the results are ordered the same way as the example words on a character page: the words you know best, then the words most relevant to you, then the most frequent ones. Without an account, the order is by frequency alone.

Flags

A flag starts with # and filters the results. xue #hsk-1 keeps the HSK 1 words and characters starting with xue, and #hsk-2 on its own lists the whole HSK 2 list. Every flag in a search has to match.

#word and #hanzi (or #char) keep one kind of entry: shui #hanzi shows the characters read shui and no words. They filter a search and do nothing on their own.

Flags combine with each other and with search text:

The stroke, radical and part flags apply to characters only. A search for #strokes:3 therefore shows characters and no words.

The ? button in the search box opens the full list, and clicking a flag there adds it to the search.

Searching your own study data

The flags and keywords below work only when you are signed in. The flag list marks these flags, and signed out the search does not offer them.

These flags filter by what you have done with a word or character. #new keeps what you marked new or have not marked at all, so it needs search text or another flag next to it. Several level flags together match any of them: #seen #familiar keeps both.

The keywords on your flashcards count as meanings. If a card for 食物 has the keyword grub, searching grub finds 食物. Only cards in decks you made or have studied count, so your results can differ from a signed-out search.

Study, next to the word results on the search page and under them in the search box, starts a flashcard session on the words the search finds. It hands out the new and due ones at the levels you study, one card per word. The reading and meanings come from the first entry the search found for that word. #looked-up:7d #new studies what you looked up this week and have not learned yet.

With the search box empty, your recent searches are listed: pick one to search again, remove one with its ×, or clear the list. The input method also remembers the candidate you picked for a sequence and offers it first next time. Signed in, both are kept in your account and follow you to your other devices; signed out, they stay on this one.

The input method

The input method writes Chinese without a Chinese keyboard. Turn it on with the 拼 button in the search box. While it is on, what you type becomes a sequence, underlined in the box, and the list under the box offers what the sequence could stand for. Pick an entry and it replaces the sequence. The next thing you type starts a new sequence.

Each sequence is read several ways at once:

• Pinyin. zhongguo offers 中国 and the words that start with it, such as 中国画. A single syllable such as zhong also offers the characters read zhong. Tones may be typed but do not filter: zhong1 offers 重 (zhòng) as well as 中.
• Meaning. English. water offers 水, then other characters and words meaning water.
• Parts. Two or more parts joined with +. sandianshui+gong offers 江 and the other characters with 氵 and a part read gong. A part can be a radical name in pinyin (sandianshui, yanzipang), its English meaning (water), the radical itself (氵, 讠), any character (吾) or the English meaning of a character: water+each finds 海 and 落, since each is both 每 and 各.
• Meaning and parts. One part may be an English word that is not a radical name. It then filters by meaning: lake+water offers 湖, the character meaning lake that contains 氵.
• Words by parts. Parts find words too. Each part matches one character of the word, in any order: the character itself, a part inside it, or its meaning. mouth+heart offers a few characters with both parts, then 中心 and 口感: 口 is mouth and 感 contains 心. An English part can also match the meaning of the whole word: texture+heart offers 口感. The list starts with a few characters, then the words, then the remaining characters.

Flags work inside a sequence too. water+mouth #strokes:9 keeps the 9-stroke characters, and xue #hsk-1 keeps HSK 1 entries.

Pick radicals… under the candidates opens the radicals inside the list. Each radical you pick is added to the sequence as a part, and picking it again takes it out. Radicals you typed into the sequence yourself, as the radical character, start out picked. Below the radicals are the characters that contain all of them: pick one and it takes their place in the sequence.

Candidates are shown in the script chosen in your settings and inserted in that script.

Enter inserts the highlighted candidate, the arrow keys and Tab move through the list, and Escape keeps the sequence as you typed it. When there is no sequence, Enter searches as usual. The keys can be changed, see Keyboard shortcuts.

There is always at least one candidate: the sequence itself, as typed.

Finding a character by its radicals

The 部 button opens the radical lookup. Pick the parts you can see in a character: the list below keeps the characters that contain all of them, sorted by stroke count. Radicals that no remaining character contains are greyed out. The box above the radicals finds one by its English meaning or its name in pinyin. The lookup also has a page of its own: characters by radical.

The radicals are the 214 Kangxi radicals from the character pages, with their variant forms such as 氵 for 水. The picker shows the forms of the script chosen in your settings: 讠 and 钅 in simplified, 訁 and 釒 in traditional. Picking one form finds characters written with any form of that radical, and a form two radicals share, such as 月 for moon and for meat, is shown once and finds both. A character counts as containing a radical when the radical appears anywhere in it, not only as its main radical: 语 contains 讠, 五 and 口. The breakdown comes from Make Me a Hanzi, and from KanjiVG for characters Make Me a Hanzi does not cover (see the acknowledgements).

Keyboard shortcuts

These are your current keys. Change them with the button below, or under Keyboard Shortcuts in the account menu.