Introducing Dengdeng Dictionary

Our Chinese–English dictionary is live, and free to use.

We built Dengdeng Dictionary for quick lookups and easy browsing between words.

You can check a definition and get back to what you were reading. Or open one of its characters, compare a related meaning, and follow another entry without typing a new search each time.

It comes from the same team as Dengdeng, our app for reading real stories from China at your level. The dictionary is a separate website. You don't need the app or an account to use it.

Quick lookups

Search in simplified or traditional Chinese, pinyin, or English. Open an entry for its readings and definitions, with pronunciation audio where available.

We're working to keep search and word pages fast, especially when you move through several entries in a row.

That matters even more when you're checking several words in a paragraph. Looking something up should be a small interruption.

The connections

Each word page gives you a few ways to continue. Related meanings let you compare words about similar things. Other links lead to words that share a character.

You can also open the individual characters inside a word to check their own readings and meanings.

Take 学生, meaning student. You can open 学 to check its meaning, then look at words such as 学习, to study, or 大学, university. Comparing the words helps you see how 学 is used in each one.

Those are different kinds of connection. Sharing a character doesn't make two words synonyms, and a similar meaning doesn't mean you can swap them in a sentence. The links give you words to compare; their definitions help you decide what fits.

We want to make those connections more useful. Often you need more than a translation: how a word is formed, or how it differs from another one you already know.

From a word on this site

We've also added an “Open in dictionary” link to the word lookups on the Dengdeng website, including the journal and beginner roadmap.

Tap a Chinese word for its pinyin and meaning, then open its dictionary entry in a new tab. Your place in the article stays where it was. If the text has no dictionary entry, the link is greyed out.

Practice with flashcards

There's also a flashcard quiz if you want to practice what you look up. Pick your HSK levels — the new nine-band standard, the old six levels, or both — and the quiz repeats the words you forget until you remember them three times in a row.

It runs in your browser, needs no account, and every setup has a share link you can send to a study partner. Try the HSK flashcard quiz.

Still early

This is the first release. There's a lot left to improve: search results, the quality of the connections, and the examples and audio available for each entry.

Some pages have more detail than others. We'll keep adding to them and improving which related words we suggest.

The definitions come from CC-CEDICT. You can read about the sources and credits on the dictionary's About page.

We're just starting out. If a search misses the word you expected, or a connection doesn't make sense, tell us which word you were looking at.

Open Dengdeng Dictionary and try a word you've wanted to check.