Chinese word senses marked with topical category "Symbols": list

( (Punctuation) Added to the end of a message, either left parenthesis only or both, used in place of ellipses …… (which can be read as indecisiveness) to imply an abrupt and intentional end to an incomplete sentence.

( ) (Punctuation) Used to provide a deeper or second meaning to a phrase. Probably from Japanese 義(ぎ)訓(くん) (gikun, “invented reading”). Compare English read (“used after a euphemism to introduce the intended, more blunt meaning of a term”).

( ) (Punctuation) Added to the end of a message, with short text inside, as a sort of tone indicator.

( ) (Punctuation) Used to censor vulgar, profane or sensitive words or characters. Compare x in Latin alphabet. A formal way to censor words in Chinese is using × instead.

( ) (Punctuation) Added to the end of a message to indicate a lighthearted or joking tone.

( ) (Punctuation) Added to the end of a message, either left parenthesis only or both, used in place of ellipses …… (which can be read as indecisiveness) to imply an abrupt and intentional end to an incomplete sentence.

) (Punctuation) used in ( )

`num` `num` (Punctuation) Wraps a piece of text, indicating a hashtag on social media.

~ (Punctuation) Indicating the lengthening of a pronunciation.

· (Punctuation) Separates first and last names in personal names transcribed into Chinese characters.

—— (Punctuation) Chinese em dash (—). It occupies the space of two characters in the center of the line. It is called 破折號／破折号 (pòzhéhào).

‘ ’ (Punctuation) Encloses an embedded (inner) quotation. The outer quotation is enclosed with “ ”.

“ ” (Punctuation) Encloses a quotation.

… (Punctuation) See …….

…… (Punctuation) Ellipsis.; Indicates speechlessness.

………… (Punctuation) Ellipsis indicating subsequent paragraphs in a quotation are omitted.

、 (Punctuation) (comma in a list)

。 (Punctuation) . (full stop or period, marking the end of a sentence)

。。。 (Punctuation) Indicates speechlessness or helplessness.

〈〉 (Punctuation) Encloses titles of books when embedded within a book title.

〈〉 (Punctuation) Encloses titles of sections of a book.

《》 (Punctuation) Encloses titles of books.

《》 (Punctuation) Encloses a text expressing something that is complained or satirized to be done so "skilledly" that can be written into a book named so.

《》 (Punctuation) Used to quote a text/speech and express that the quotation is so absurd but commonly seen that it is deemed a "classic (典 (diǎn))" (hence enclosed by this pair of marks for book titles); also by extension used for general mocking.

《》 (Punctuation) Used to quote a word or some words to satirize that the word(s) is/are just so called while the fact is far different from (mostly opposite) the sense of the word(s).

「」 (Punctuation) Encloses a quotation.

「」 (Punctuation) Encloses an embedded (inner) quotation.

『』 (Punctuation) Encloses an embedded (inner) quotation.

『』 (Punctuation) Encloses a quotation.

【】 (Punctuation) Lenticular brackets.

﹏ (Punctuation) Underlines titles of books.

𖿢 (Punctuation) Mark, called "hook" or "tadpole" mark, or 鉤識號／钩识号 in Chinese that denotes pause or break in the text. (See usage notes)

Download postprocessed JSONL data for these senses (1.3MB)

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable Chinese dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-03-02 using wiktextract (32c88e6 and 633533e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.