Dictionary Search Functions

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Dictionary Search Functions

Clavis Sinica's dictionary of over 25,000 entries is fully searchable, so you can also use the program as a stand-alone Chinese-English or English-Chinese dictionary. You can search for Chinese characters by pinyin, radical, or number and/or order of strokes. Multi-character words and phrases can be searched using pinyin with or without tone numbers. Finally, you can look up any English word or phrase and bring up a list of all the Chinese entries that contain the search string in their English definition.

	This window shows the various options available under the Dictionary menu on the main program toolbar. Note that you can look up characters, compounds, radicals, or English words, and that you can also add new characters and compounds to the program dictionary.
	This window shows the results of a search for all characters having the pinyin shi. If you know the correct tone for the character you're looking for, you can simply include the tone number at the end of the pinyin (eg. shi4). Clicking on any character in the results box would bring up the Character Information Window for that character.

If you don't know the pinyin of the character you're looking for, you can look it up by the number and order of the strokes they contain. This feature is very useful for looking up an unfamiliar character from a print source when both the pronunciation and radical are unknown. In this case, the user has searched for all characters having seven strokes, of which the first four are a horizontal stroke, a vertical, an angle, and a left-sloping diagonal, respectively. Clicking on either of the two resulting characters would open the Character Information Window for that character.

You can also use the dictionary to look up multi-character compounds by their pinyin. Again, you can enter the pinyin search string with or without tone numbers. Clicking on any of the characters in the results box brings up the Character Information window for that character. The program's audio pronunciation feature would allow you to hear the difference between these two forms of lishi by simply pressing the F3 key.

These last two windows show the results for two English word searches. Note that the program returns not only exact matches for the search term, but also entries containing the search term in any position. This feature is helpful for identifying just the right Chinese term, as well as for learning other Chinese words with related meanings.

For further details about the features of Clavis Sinica, please visit the Product Information page or the list of Frequently Asked Questions. For any questions not answered on these pages, please contact info@clavisinica.com.

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