Chinese Idiom Dictionary

The Chinese Idiom Dictionary is a small in-page dictionary of chengyu. It has 1,690 common idioms built in, and each entry shows the idiom, its pinyin with tone marks, and a one-line meaning. You can filter by the idiom itself, by a keyword from the meaning, or by pinyin with tone marks, and there is a 'Random' button for browsing. It is meant for quickly checking how an idiom is written and roughly what it means, for writing, homework or exam revision. Please note that the meanings are short summaries written in Chinese; there are no example sentences, origin stories, synonyms or antonyms, and anything you intend to quote formally should be checked against an authoritative dictionary.

How to use it

1. When the page opens, the list shows the first 100 idioms. Scroll to the bottom of the list box and click 'Show more (N of M shown)' to append another 100.
2. Type into the search box (placeholder: 'Search by idiom or meaning keyword…'). The list filters as you type, with no need to press Enter. Search results are also shown 100 at a time with 'Show more', and each change to the search text starts again from the first 100. Spaces at the start and end are ignored.
3. Typing a few characters of an idiom is enough, for example 画蛇 finds 画蛇添足. Typing a word from a meaning, for example 谨慎, lists idioms whose meaning contains it.
4. You can also search by pinyin, with tone marks ('bàn tú') or without ('ban tu' or 'bantu'). If nothing matches, the list shows 'No matching idioms found'.
5. Click 'Random' next to the search box to show a randomly chosen idiom in a highlighted card above the list, with its writing, pinyin and meaning. Click again for another. The button ignores whatever is in the search box and always draws from the full set.

A worked example (actually computed)

Searching 画蛇 returns exactly one result: 画蛇添足, pinyin huà shé tiān zú, meaning 'to do something superfluous and spoil it' (the on-screen text is Chinese). Searching 谨慎 returns 11 idioms because the word appears in either the idiom or its meaning, including 守口如瓶, 三缄其口 and 谦虚谨慎. Searching 小心 returns 6, including 小心翼翼, and searching 龙 returns 14, including 画龙点睛 and 叶公好龙. These counts were obtained by running the tool's own filter on the built-in data.

What it supports and where it stops

• The built-in data covers 1,690 idioms, which is not all of them. A rare idiom may be missing, and not finding something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
• Search is plain substring matching: an entry is listed if the idiom, its meaning or its pinyin contains what you typed. There is no synonym expansion or spelling correction, so a query is matched literally against the Chinese meaning text.
• Pinyin search works without tone marks: typing 'yi' ignores tones and matches all 250 entries containing that syllable, while typing 'yī' with a tone mark matches only the 128 exact ones.
• Each entry has a single-sentence meaning. There is no origin, story, example sentence, synonym, antonym or usage note.
• Meanings are in Chinese only. The English interface still shows the Chinese meaning, because no English translations exist yet.
• The list is rendered in chunks: 100 entries at a time, with a 'Show more' button that appends another 100. There are no page numbers and no 'show all' button; the button label shows how many are displayed.
• There are no favourites, history or audio pronunciation.

FAQ: I only remember the rough meaning. How do I find the idiom?

Type a keyword from the meaning you have in mind, such as 谨慎 (cautious), 后悔 (regret) or 多余 (superfluous). The tool looks for idioms whose meaning text contains that word. Because matching is literal, trying one or two near-synonyms often helps, and adding more characters narrows a long list.

FAQ: Why doesn't my pinyin search work?

Pinyin may be typed with or without tone marks ('huà shé', 'hua she' and 'huashe' all work). If nothing matches, check the spelling or type the characters instead. To generate tone-marked pinyin from characters, try the Chinese to Pinyin tool on this site.

FAQ: Is 'Random' truly random?

Each click uses the browser's built-in random number generator to pick one of the 1,690 entries, and every entry has essentially the same chance. It doesn't remember what it has shown, so you can see the same idiom twice in a row.

FAQ: Can I copy these meanings into homework or a paper?

That isn't advised. The meanings are brief summaries for quick reference and may not match the wording of authoritative dictionaries. For exact quotations, consult a standard dictionary and cite it.

Privacy and processing

The idiom data is delivered with the page and is held in your browser. Searching and the random pick both run locally, with no network requests, and your search terms are not uploaded or recorded.