Idiomatic Dictionary

Author: Wen Duanzheng
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-09-01
Features: Tailored for students' college entrance and high school entrance exams, this Chinese reference book was once best-selling across the country, with a total sales of 1,200,000 copies. In terms of content, the old version was optimized according to the new teaching requirements, emphasizing innovation, origin, cultivation, and practicality. In terms of form, the book uses a new layout with double-color printing to achieve solemnity, elegance, liveliness, and novelty. Entries. This book includes over 2,200 entries, primarily focusing on common and frequently used idioms for readers with junior and intermediate cultural levels in reading and writing. Entries consist of main entries and subentries. Main entries have annotations and example sentences, while subentries are marked with "also as" after the main entries. Each main entry has no more than two subentries, and subentries do not provide examples or separate entries. Typography. The fonts used in this book are based on the "Total List of Simplified Characters" compiled by the National Language and Character Working Committee and the "List for the Standardization of Variant Characters" jointly issued by the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China and the Committee of Language Reform. Definitions. First, difficult characters and words in the entry are explained, followed by the explanation of the entire meaning. Definitions strive for accuracy and conciseness without tracing etymology, but relevant allusions related to understanding the meaning should be appropriately explained. Phonetic Transcription. Difficult characters and easily mispronounced characters in the entries are transcribed using Pinyin. Example Sentences. Each entry has example sentences to assist in explaining the meaning of the entry. The sources of example sentences are primarily from books, with a preference for those from famous works of modern and ancient masters and well-known authors, but not excluding general works (including newspapers and magazines). Entries with healthy content, good terms, and standardized language and characters are used. Example sentences from famous works and works with certain reputation are marked with their sources, while other works, to save space, are only marked as "book," "newspaper," or "journal." Arrangement. Entries are arranged in the order of Pinyin phonetic sequence. For entries with the same initial sound and rhyme, the order is determined by tone (yin, yang, upper, lower). If the initial sound, rhyme, and tone are all the same, the order is determined by the stroke number and stroke order (horizontal, vertical, hook, dot, fold) of the initial character. If the initial characters are identical, the order is determined by the phonetic sequence of the second character, and so on. Index. At the back of the dictionary, there is an "Index of Initial Characters by Stroke Number" for reference.