A Small Dictionary of Idioms (Revised Edition)

Author: Xu Xueling / Wu Zongwen (editors)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: This book includes a total of 4,528 idioms, encompassing all idioms that appear in the unified textbooks for primary and secondary school Chinese language curricula, as well as a small number of common phrases. The book adopts a main entry and sub-entry format. A total of 3,403 entries are established, appropriately consolidating idioms that share similar, related, or identical content but differ in wording. The entries are arranged in the order of the first character according to the Chinese Pinyin alphabet. If the first character has the same pronunciation, they are ordered by stroke count from few to many. If the stroke count is also the same, they are arranged by the order of stroke shape (horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling, and hook). If the first character's pronunciation, stroke count, and stroke shape are all identical, they are ordered by the sound sequence of the second and third characters.
When defining the idioms, the book generally first explains the difficult characters or words separately, followed by a comprehensive explanation of the idiom. For a few easily understandable idioms, only a comprehensive explanation is provided without annotations, or annotations are provided without a comprehensive explanation. The book does not generally create its own example sentences. For idioms found in primary and secondary school Chinese language textbooks, the book typically uses the example sentences from the textbooks. Those appearing in the text are marked with the title of the text, while others appearing in sections such as "Chinese Language Knowledge," "Writing Practice," "Annotations and Tips," "Thinking and Exercises," and appendices are marked accordingly. The book also includes a "Pinyin Index of Entry First Characters" and a "Stroke Index of Entries" for easy reference.