Ciyuan

The Ciyuan or Tz'u-yüan is the earliest modern encyclopedic Chinese phrase dictionary. The Commercial Press published the first edition Ciyuan in 1915, and reissued it in various formats, including a 1931 supplement, and a fully revised 1979-1984 edition.

Contents and significance

In terms of Chinese lexicography, the Ciyuan is a cidian (辭典 "word/phrase dictionary") for spoken expressions, as opposed to a zidian (字典, lit. "character/logograph dictionary") for written Chinese characters.

The title word ciyuan 辭源 – which combines ci 辭 "take leave; decline; diction; phrase; word" and yuan 源 "source; cause; origin" – is an old variant for ciyuan 詞源 "word origin; etymology", usually written with ci 詞 "word; term; speech".

The Ciyuan has been popular with Chinese intellectuals. For example, (Reed 2011:3), during the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong carried two modern dictionaries, the Ciyuan and the Cihai.

The lexicographer Reinhard Hartmann (2003:16) predicts that the revised Ciyuan "should remain a basic research tool for all students of China's pre-modern literature and history for many years to come."