<p>Intralingual dictionaries will have some level of circular definition, that's just inevitable. But to be fair, I'm not surprised if there's a lack of high quality Chinese dictionaries. In this particular case, I do think that:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The dictionary is not targeted at non native speakers, it assumes too much knowledge. 委婉 definitely can be broken down into simpler words and explained further.</p>
</li>
<li><p>We do use vocabulary dictionaries. The dictionary (at least the one I uesd) would first define 委，then list and define all the words that start with 委.</p>
</li>
<li><p>You could look up 含蓄, which might help you. But more importantly, I don't think you should limit yourself to &quot;dictionaries&quot;.</p>
</li>
</ol>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-10T02:08:04.027Z
2022-08-10T02:08:04.027Z
EEQ
<p>If the purpose is to understand the word from the perspective of an English speaker, I would say Wiktionary is a better option which gives you synonyms, definitions, examples, and pronunciation (plus in many dialects).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T13:10:53.767Z
I am not sure wiktionary (at least for chinese) is a good resource to rely on at this stage. For example, for 委婉（https://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A7%94%E5%A9%89）wiktionary does not even give an explanation. It does give multiple pronunciations, but for beginners they could sometimes be more confusing than helping (e.g. wēiwǎn is probably even considered wrong by putonghua/standard madarin). It may help sometimes, but I doubt it could be used as a primary tool for day-to-day use.
ALife
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T13:16:18.497Z
@ALife Apparently, the "en." one is better, even for Chinese language: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A7%94%E5%A9%89
MMZK1526
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T13:20:42.210Z
Yes, indeed, both in the sense of pronunciation, and more importantly, the explanation. Sorry I missed that; you did emphasize it's for English speakers and certainly that implies the English version for Chinese.
ALife
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T16:51:51.100Z
Note that while I understand English, I'm not a native English speaker. Learning to navigate a C-C dictionary would be more useful than getting definitions without context in my second language. Having read several Chinese novels and knowing about 4000 characters and god knows how many words, learning to rely on C-C dictionaries seems reasonable. I rarely open an English-Swedish dictionary, but rather jump straight to a E-E one.
timseb
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-10T03:19:07.643Z
2022-08-10T03:19:07.643Z
MMZK1526
<p>I think another (better) dictionary would help.</p>
<p>For example, I looked up 现代汉语词典 and found the following definitions:</p>
<p>委婉：（言辞、声音等）婉转</p>
<p>婉转：1. （说话）温和而曲折（但是不失本意）2.（歌声、鸟鸣声等）抑扬动听</p>
<p>which look fairly accurate to me as a native speaker. The words used to explain (温和，曲折，抑扬，动听）also look more basic to me;
if these words look difficult to you, you may further look them up. I assume the explanation of these words won't refer back to 委婉/婉转.</p>
<hr />
<p>Edit: After reading again the dictionary referred to by the OP's post, I noticed the example it gives: &quot;「有什麼話委婉說出即可，何必大聲嚷嚷」&quot; This seems not very appropriate since 委婉 is not quite the  opposite of 大聲嚷嚷, which the example somehow implies. However, as in the explanation given above (which I agree), 委婉 means both 温和 and 曲折; only  温和 is roughly the opposite of 大聲嚷嚷 while 曲折 is pretty much independent of 大聲嚷嚷 or not. This further confirms my comments at the beginning: you may want to try a better dictionary.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T16:46:08.887Z
It's funny you should say that, because the first draft of this question actually included a mention of 现代汉语词典 because I too find it to be the most accessible C-C dictionary out there. My only caveat with it has been that it sometimes oversimplifies it's definitions. For example, 呷 being defined simply as 喝.
timseb
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T18:05:54.083Z
well, that's a separate question, right? For the question you asked as it is, are you happy with the definition 现代汉语词典  gives you (as I quoted above)? Do still consider the definitions there "looped" (or in your words "dead end")        ----- I am sorry I was not able to know what your draft was...
ALife
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T18:14:25.547Z
Also reading your post again: "It's a poorly edited dictionary. This would be somewhat surprising, considering its status and how extensive it is." From my experience, being "extensive" does not necessarily mean good, sometimes could be opposite. Relatively famous examples are some/all the dictionaries edited by 王同亿 -- correct me if I am wrong --  that's from quite a few years and my memory could have lied.
ALife
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T18:25:22.767Z
When I said 王同亿 dictionaries above, I meant they are very extensive but of quite poor quality. I also searched the web and found a couple of references: http://www.xys.org/xys/ebooks/others/science/dajia/wenshi/wangtongyi3.txt and http://www.huayuqiao.org/articles/wanghuidi/wangxcjs41.htm Hope they help.
ALife
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T21:58:45.770Z
"It's funny you should say that" does not imply you did something wrong. It's an idiomatic expression pointing out a coincidence of some kind. I'm sorry if you took it as critique. The Cross-Straits dictionary is a famous dictionary that was released with quite a lot of press. With state backing as well, as far as I know. Similar problems exist in other dictionaries, like the Guifan and the MoE. I'm happy with this *specific* definition in 现代汉语词典, but my question was not regarding the meaning of 委婉, which I already knew before starting this thread. I merely used it as an illustrative example.
timseb
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T22:43:39.710Z
Sure, but now it turns out that your "illustrative example" is not revealing the "problem"  you want to discuss, you may want to find a better example. As for the problematic dictionary you referred to in your original post, I do not think it's populous among native speakers (from mainland china). Note that even if it was "released with quite a lot of press", it still do not necessarily mean it's good at all; 王同亿's dictionaries were released with lots of press news as well ...
ALife
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T22:58:16.703Z
It's a dictionary in traditional Chinese from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, of course it will be more popular in Taiwan (also native speakers). As goes for the MoE dictionaries. These are certainly some of the most popular and reputable dictionaries for them. Are you seriously asking me to actively search for entries to find examples for you? If so, I have better ways to spend my time. For fun I just looked up 塌 in the Guifan, certainly not an disreputable dictionary. 塌 leads to 坍塌, 坍塌 leads to 倒塌, 倒塌 leads to (建筑物等)倾倒坍塌. You're turning a simple question into a debate. I'm done here.
timseb
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T23:13:14.323Z
It's ridiculous that you asked a question with an invalid example, and when I suggested you providing a better example so that I can better help you (note your most recent example 塌/Guifan is still not revealing anything about 现代汉语词典 that I suggested as a better dictionary), you said it's a waste of your time. Is that the way how you were raised to speak/ask for help?  I am sorry I cannot further help you.
ALife
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-16T13:03:02.433Z
2022-08-16T13:23:18.610Z
2022-08-16T13:23:18.610Z
ALife
<p>Lexicography is a well-established tradition in the West because 'words' have always been the most recognible meaningful units in Indo-european languages so linguistic efforts have always gone into compiling dictionaries to define <em>words</em> (as opposed to a smaller unit, like morphemes, or a bigger one, like phrases).</p>
<p>In Chinese, due to the nature of its writing system and the slightly more monosyllabic nature of both Middle and Old Chinese, the most recognisable units of meaning have always been what are now recognised as morphemes, not words, so most scholarly effort has always gone into compiling dictionaries to define <em>morphemes</em> (or of 'monosyllabic &amp; monomorphemic words', if you will), ie character dictionaries. In this tradition, what we now call Chinese 'words' are viewed as larger units, similar to what compound nouns and phrases feel like in English.</p>
<p>This view has of course changed in contemporary practice, as vernacular Mandarin has completely taken over and linguistic studies have spread. But lexicography is still in its infancy (just think of how rare it is to find the etymology of a <em>word</em>, rather than a <em>character</em>). That means that, in China, little effort has gone so far into trying to advance (and compete in!) <strong>the craft of working out how to define words in the most exhaustive AND succinct way possible</strong>. Absent that goal, most Chinese lexicographers just go for succint: they offer a distant synonym, some literary examples, and stop there (the fact that such jobs tend to be culturally elitist doesn't help the cause of lexicographic transparency).</p>
<p>So we're left with word dictionaries where most (not all, but most) 'definitions' actually look like they belong in a thesaurus and/or in a quotation dictionary instead - which incidentally may be less commonly used than dictionaries for the same reasons. This situation may change but it will take time: vernacular Chinese has only been in written use for a century or so, native knowledge of words and word boundaries has probably been around for less than that, and it usually takes a couple of decades to 'write' a definition-based dictionary. And this is a job only natives can do. So we shall have to wait for them to keep working at it. Hopefully, current dictionary definitions will in time be expanded and unpacked for the benefit of future generations.</p>
<p>In the meantime, what you're doing is not wrong: cross-referencing multiple word and character dictionaries, as well as sleuthing for examples and translations in different languages, should tell you all you need to know in most cases. And for the rest, there's online forums.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-10T09:21:31.587Z
I was just about writing a reply to @EEQ stating that my knowledge of Japanese is much lower than my knowledge of Chinese, but I still encounter circular definitions in Japanese dictionaries much less frequently. Since Japanese is made up from both Chinese loanwords and a vocabulary structure that is more reminiscent of European languages, your answer would explain why that is the case.
timseb
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-10T11:48:28.853Z
Yes, I agree. Circular definitions are a bug, not a feature. A word dictionary is not supposed to be a literary thesaurus - they're different things.
Sanchuan
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-10T09:14:56.530Z
2023-01-16T23:43:13.383Z
2023-01-16T23:43:13.383Z
Sanchuan
<p>Let's say I encounter the word 委婉 and I want to find out what it means. When I look it up in the <a href="https://www.moedict.tw/%7E%E5%A7%94%E5%A9%89" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cross-Straits</a> dictionary (perhaps the largest free and professionally edited dictionary out there), I run into circular definitions.</p>
<p>委婉 is defined as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>婉轉含蓄。</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If I didn't understand 委婉 because 婉 was causing me trouble, I will not understand 婉轉 either.</p>
<p>婉轉 is defined as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>形容話語委婉含蓄。</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, dead end. If I then move on to just check if the definitions for 婉 alone is going to help me, I get:</p>
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>〈書〉和順的。</li>
<li>〈書〉美好的。</li>
<li>〈書〉委婉。</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>Once again, 婉 is defined in (3) by the usage of the character in the definition. I can think of three explanations for this:</p>
<ol>
<li>It's a poorly edited dictionary. This would be somewhat surprising, considering its status and how extensive it is.</li>
<li>Chinese people are supposed to be using a character dictionary, rather than a vocabulary dictionary, in cases like this. If so, is there any logic determining when which dictionary should be used? After all, 委婉 is not a character, but a word, and I wanted to understand what that word meant.</li>
<li>I am using the dictionary in the wrong way. For example, I am meant to make use of definitions (1) and (2) in the definitions for 婉. I doubt this is the case, but it's possible.</li>
</ol>

<dictionary>
How are Chinese-Chinese word dictionaries meant to be navigated?
# How are Chinese-Chinese word dictionaries meant to be navigated?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-08-10)

Let's say I encounter the word 委婉 and I want to find out what it means. When I look it up in the [Cross-Straits](https://www.moedict.tw/%7E%E5%A7%94%E5%A9%89) dictionary (perhaps the largest free and professionally edited dictionary out there), I run into circular definitions.

委婉 is defined as:

> 婉轉含蓄。

If I didn't understand 委婉 because 婉 was causing me trouble, I will not understand 婉轉 either.

婉轉 is defined as:

> 形容話語委婉含蓄。

In other words, dead end. If I then move on to just check if the definitions for 婉 alone is going to help me, I get:

> 1. 〈書〉和順的。
> 2. 〈書〉美好的。
> 3. 〈書〉委婉。

Once again, 婉 is defined in (3) by the usage of the character in the definition. I can think of three explanations for this:

1. It's a poorly edited dictionary. This would be somewhat surprising, considering its status and how extensive it is.
2. Chinese people are supposed to be using a character dictionary, rather than a vocabulary dictionary, in cases like this. If so, is there any logic determining when which dictionary should be used? After all, 委婉 is not a character, but a word, and I wanted to understand what that word meant.
3. I am using the dictionary in the wrong way. For example, I am meant to make use of definitions (1) and (2) in the definitions for 婉. I doubt this is the case, but it's possible.

**Tags:** dictionary


---

## 4 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2022-08-10. Score: 13 | Accepted answer

Lexicography is a well-established tradition in the West because 'words' have always been the most recognible meaningful units in Indo-european languages so linguistic efforts have always gone into compiling dictionaries to define *words* (as opposed to a smaller unit, like morphemes, or a bigger one, like phrases).

In Chinese, due to the nature of its writing system and the slightly more monosyllabic nature of both Middle and Old Chinese, the most recognisable units of meaning have always been what are now recognised as morphemes, not words, so most scholarly effort has always gone into compiling dictionaries to define *morphemes* (or of 'monosyllabic & monomorphemic words', if you will), ie character dictionaries. In this tradition, what we now call Chinese 'words' are viewed as larger units, similar to what compound nouns and phrases feel like in English.

This view has of course changed in contemporary practice, as vernacular Mandarin has completely taken over and linguistic studies have spread. But lexicography is still in its infancy (just think of how rare it is to find the etymology of a *word*, rather than a *character*). That means that, in China, little effort has gone so far into trying to advance (and compete in!) **the craft of working out how to define words in the most exhaustive AND succinct way possible**. Absent that goal, most Chinese lexicographers just go for succint: they offer a distant synonym, some literary examples, and stop there (the fact that such jobs tend to be culturally elitist doesn't help the cause of lexicographic transparency).

So we're left with word dictionaries where most (not all, but most) 'definitions' actually look like they belong in a thesaurus and/or in a quotation dictionary instead - which incidentally may be less commonly used than dictionaries for the same reasons. This situation may change but it will take time: vernacular Chinese has only been in written use for a century or so, native knowledge of words and word boundaries has probably been around for less than that, and it usually takes a couple of decades to 'write' a definition-based dictionary. And this is a job only natives can do. So we shall have to wait for them to keep working at it. Hopefully, current dictionary definitions will in time be expanded and unpacked for the benefit of future generations.

In the meantime, what you're doing is not wrong: cross-referencing multiple word and character dictionaries, as well as sleuthing for examples and translations in different languages, should tell you all you need to know in most cases. And for the rest, there's online forums.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I was just about writing a reply to @username_1 stating that my knowledge of Japanese is much lower than my knowledge of Chinese, but I still encounter circular definitions in Japanese dictionaries much less frequently. Since Japanese is made up from both Chinese loanwords and a vocabulary structure that is more reminiscent of European languages, your answer would explain why that is the case.  
> **username_4**: Yes, I agree. Circular definitions are a bug, not a feature. A word dictionary is not supposed to be a literary thesaurus - they're different things.  

---

### Answer by username_1 on 2022-08-10. Score: 4

Intralingual dictionaries will have some level of circular definition, that's just inevitable. But to be fair, I'm not surprised if there's a lack of high quality Chinese dictionaries. In this particular case, I do think that:

1. The dictionary is not targeted at non native speakers, it assumes too much knowledge. 委婉 definitely can be broken down into simpler words and explained further.
2. We do use vocabulary dictionaries. The dictionary (at least the one I uesd) would first define 委，then list and define all the words that start with 委.
3. You could look up 含蓄, which might help you. But more importantly, I don't think you should limit yourself to "dictionaries".


---

### Answer by username_2 on 2022-08-10. Score: 3

If the purpose is to understand the word from the perspective of an English speaker, I would say Wiktionary is a better option which gives you synonyms, definitions, examples, and pronunciation (plus in many dialects).

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: I am not sure wiktionary (at least for chinese) is a good resource to rely on at this stage. For example, for 委婉（https://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A7%94%E5%A9%89）wiktionary does not even give an explanation. It does give multiple pronunciations, but for beginners they could sometimes be more confusing than helping (e.g. wēiwǎn is probably even considered wrong by putonghua/standard madarin). It may help sometimes, but I doubt it could be used as a primary tool for day-to-day use.  
> **username_2**: @username_3 Apparently, the "en." one is better, even for Chinese language: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A7%94%E5%A9%89  
> **username_3**: Yes, indeed, both in the sense of pronunciation, and more importantly, the explanation. Sorry I missed that; you did emphasize it's for English speakers and certainly that implies the English version for Chinese.  
> **username_0**: Note that while I understand English, I'm not a native English speaker. Learning to navigate a C-C dictionary would be more useful than getting definitions without context in my second language. Having read several Chinese novels and knowing about 4000 characters and god knows how many words, learning to rely on C-C dictionaries seems reasonable. I rarely open an English-Swedish dictionary, but rather jump straight to a E-E one.  

---

### Answer by username_3 on 2022-08-16. Score: 1

I think another (better) dictionary would help.

For example, I looked up 现代汉语词典 and found the following definitions:

委婉：（言辞、声音等）婉转

婉转：1. （说话）温和而曲折（但是不失本意）2.（歌声、鸟鸣声等）抑扬动听

which look fairly accurate to me as a native speaker. The words used to explain (温和，曲折，抑扬，动听）also look more basic to me;
if these words look difficult to you, you may further look them up. I assume the explanation of these words won't refer back to 委婉/婉转.

---

Edit: After reading again the dictionary referred to by the OP's post, I noticed the example it gives: "「有什麼話委婉說出即可，何必大聲嚷嚷」" This seems not very appropriate since 委婉 is not quite the opposite of 大聲嚷嚷, which the example somehow implies. However, as in the explanation given above (which I agree), 委婉 means both 温和 and 曲折; only 温和 is roughly the opposite of 大聲嚷嚷 while 曲折 is pretty much independent of 大聲嚷嚷 or not. This further confirms my comments at the beginning: you may want to try a better dictionary.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: It's funny you should say that, because the first draft of this question actually included a mention of 现代汉语词典 because I too find it to be the most accessible C-C dictionary out there. My only caveat with it has been that it sometimes oversimplifies it's definitions. For example, 呷 being defined simply as 喝.  
> **username_3**: well, that's a separate question, right? For the question you asked as it is, are you happy with the definition 现代汉语词典  gives you (as I quoted above)? Do still consider the definitions there "looped" (or in your words "dead end")        ----- I am sorry I was not able to know what your draft was...  
> **username_3**: Also reading your post again: "It's a poorly edited dictionary. This would be somewhat surprising, considering its status and how extensive it is." From my experience, being "extensive" does not necessarily mean good, sometimes could be opposite. Relatively famous examples are some/all the dictionaries edited by 王同亿 -- correct me if I am wrong --  that's from quite a few years and my memory could have lied.  
> **username_3**: When I said 王同亿 dictionaries above, I meant they are very extensive but of quite poor quality. I also searched the web and found a couple of references: http://www.xys.org/xys/ebooks/others/science/dajia/wenshi/wangtongyi3.txt and http://www.huayuqiao.org/articles/wanghuidi/wangxcjs41.htm Hope they help.  
> **username_0**: "It's funny you should say that" does not imply you did something wrong. It's an idiomatic expression pointing out a coincidence of some kind. I'm sorry if you took it as critique. The Cross-Straits dictionary is a famous dictionary that was released with quite a lot of press. With state backing as well, as far as I know. Similar problems exist in other dictionaries, like the Guifan and the MoE. I'm happy with this *specific* definition in 现代汉语词典, but my question was not regarding the meaning of 委婉, which I already knew before starting this thread. I merely used it as an illustrative example.  
> **username_3**: Sure, but now it turns out that your "illustrative example" is not revealing the "problem"  you want to discuss, you may want to find a better example. As for the problematic dictionary you referred to in your original post, I do not think it's populous among native speakers (from mainland china). Note that even if it was "released with quite a lot of press", it still do not necessarily mean it's good at all; 王同亿's dictionaries were released with lots of press news as well ...  
> **username_0**: It's a dictionary in traditional Chinese from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, of course it will be more popular in Taiwan (also native speakers). As goes for the MoE dictionaries. These are certainly some of the most popular and reputable dictionaries for them. Are you seriously asking me to actively search for entries to find examples for you? If so, I have better ways to spend my time. For fun I just looked up 塌 in the Guifan, certainly not an disreputable dictionary. 塌 leads to 坍塌, 坍塌 leads to 倒塌, 倒塌 leads to (建筑物等)倾倒坍塌. You're turning a simple question into a debate. I'm done here.  
> **username_3**: It's ridiculous that you asked a question with an invalid example, and when I suggested you providing a better example so that I can better help you (note your most recent example 塌/Guifan is still not revealing anything about 现代汉语词典 that I suggested as a better dictionary), you said it's a waste of your time. Is that the way how you were raised to speak/ask for help?  I am sorry I cannot further help you.  

---

