Zhongwen Da Cidian

The Zhongwen Da Cidian is an unabridged Chinese dictionary, edited by Zhang Qiyun and others. The first edition had 40 volumes, which were published from 1962 through 1968.

This encyclopedic dictionary includes 49,905 Chinese characters arranged under the traditional 214 Kangxi radicals. Each character entry shows the evolution of graphic forms , gives pronunciations, and chronological meanings with sources. Words, phrases, and four-character idioms are given under the head character entry, arranged according to the number of in their components. "There are many phrases under some characters," note Teng and Biggerstaff , for example, 3,417 under ''yi'' and 1,398 under ''huang'' .

Although the ''Zhongwen Da Cidian'' closely resembles the first edition 1960 Dai Kan-Wa jiten , it is not listed under works consulted. The ''Zhongwen Da Cidian'' was the best available reference work of Chinese until 1993, when the ''Hanyu Da Cidian'' was completed.