See koan in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for koan meaning in English (5.6kB)
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "ja",
"3": "公案",
"tr": "kōan"
},
"expansion": "Japanese 公案 (kōan)",
"name": "bor"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "zh",
"3": "-"
},
"expansion": "Chinese",
"name": "der"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "公案",
"2": "",
"3": "official business"
},
"expansion": "公案 (gōng'àn, “official business”)",
"name": "zh-l"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From Japanese 公案 (kōan), which was from Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn, “official business”).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "koans",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "koan (plural koans)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Buddhism",
"orig": "en:Buddhism",
"parents": [
"Religion",
"Culture",
"Society",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1977, Thomas Hoover, chapter 1, in Zen Culture",
"text": "Zen, with its absurdist koan, laughs at life much the way the Marx brothers did. What exactly can you make of a philosophical system whose teacher answers the question, \"How do you see things so clearly?\" with the seeming one-liner, \"I close my eyes\"?",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A story about a Zen master and his student, sometimes like a riddle, other times like a fable, which has become an object of Zen study, and which, when meditated upon, may unlock mechanisms in the Zen student’s mind leading to satori."
],
"id": "en-koan-en-noun-Dhx0A2zf",
"links": [
[
"Buddhism",
"Buddhism"
],
[
"Zen",
"Zen"
],
[
"riddle",
"riddle"
],
[
"fable",
"fable"
],
[
"meditate",
"meditate"
],
[
"unlock",
"unlock"
],
[
"mechanisms",
"mechanisms"
],
[
"satori",
"satori"
]
],
"qualifier": "Zen Buddhism",
"raw_glosses": [
"(Zen Buddhism) A story about a Zen master and his student, sometimes like a riddle, other times like a fable, which has become an object of Zen study, and which, when meditated upon, may unlock mechanisms in the Zen student’s mind leading to satori."
],
"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"code": "nan-hbl",
"lang": "Chinese",
"roman": "kong-àn",
"sense": "zen story",
"tags": [
"Hokkien"
],
"word": "公案"
},
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "gōng'àn",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "公案"
},
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "kōan"
},
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "zen story",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "Koan"
},
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "koan"
},
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"code": "ga",
"lang": "Irish",
"sense": "zen story",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "cóán"
},
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"alt": "こうあん",
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "kōan",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "公案"
},
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"code": "ko",
"lang": "Korean",
"roman": "hwadu",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "화두"
},
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "koán",
"sense": "zen story",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "коа́н"
},
{
"_dis1": "65 10 25",
"code": "vi",
"lang": "Vietnamese",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "công án"
}
]
},
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow",
"text": "Gibberish. Or else a koan that Achtfaden isn’t equipped to master, a transcendent puzzle that could lead him to some moment of light.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age, paperback edition, Fourth Estate, page 303",
"text": "As always the koan “Why, Why am I here, why here” begins in her head, but she beats it back like a housewife with a broom.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A riddle with no solution, used to provoke reflection on the inadequacy of logical reasoning, and to lead to enlightenment."
],
"id": "en-koan-en-noun-BPeNdTlt",
"links": [
[
"solution",
"solution"
],
[
"provoke",
"provoke"
],
[
"reflection",
"reflection"
],
[
"inadequacy",
"inadequacy"
],
[
"logical",
"logical"
],
[
"reasoning",
"reasoning"
],
[
"enlightenment",
"enlightenment"
]
],
"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "28 68 4",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "aporia"
},
{
"_dis1": "28 68 4",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "kōan"
},
{
"_dis1": "28 68 4",
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "aporie"
},
{
"_dis1": "28 68 4",
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "koan"
},
{
"_dis1": "28 68 4",
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "aporia"
},
{
"_dis1": "28 68 4",
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "aporía"
}
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "33 6 60",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A therapy technique used by Traditional Chinese medicinal physicians or medical practitioners to break a presenting patients habitual pattern of thinking that has been diagnosed as the primary cause of an illness or disease."
],
"id": "en-koan-en-noun-xV4U0j~E"
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈkəʊ.ɑːn/",
"tags": [
"UK"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈkoʊ.ɑn/",
"tags": [
"US"
]
},
{
"audio": "en-us-koan.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/42/En-us-koan.ogg/En-us-koan.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/En-us-koan.ogg",
"tags": [
"US"
],
"text": "Audio (US)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"_dis1": "0 0 0",
"word": "kōan"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"koan"
],
"word": "koan"
}
{
"categories": [
"English 2-syllable words",
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English nouns",
"English terms borrowed from Japanese",
"English terms derived from Chinese",
"English terms derived from Japanese",
"English terms with IPA pronunciation",
"English terms with audio links"
],
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "ja",
"3": "公案",
"tr": "kōan"
},
"expansion": "Japanese 公案 (kōan)",
"name": "bor"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "zh",
"3": "-"
},
"expansion": "Chinese",
"name": "der"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "公案",
"2": "",
"3": "official business"
},
"expansion": "公案 (gōng'àn, “official business”)",
"name": "zh-l"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From Japanese 公案 (kōan), which was from Chinese 公案 (gōng'àn, “official business”).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "koans",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "koan (plural koans)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations",
"en:Buddhism"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1977, Thomas Hoover, chapter 1, in Zen Culture",
"text": "Zen, with its absurdist koan, laughs at life much the way the Marx brothers did. What exactly can you make of a philosophical system whose teacher answers the question, \"How do you see things so clearly?\" with the seeming one-liner, \"I close my eyes\"?",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A story about a Zen master and his student, sometimes like a riddle, other times like a fable, which has become an object of Zen study, and which, when meditated upon, may unlock mechanisms in the Zen student’s mind leading to satori."
],
"links": [
[
"Buddhism",
"Buddhism"
],
[
"Zen",
"Zen"
],
[
"riddle",
"riddle"
],
[
"fable",
"fable"
],
[
"meditate",
"meditate"
],
[
"unlock",
"unlock"
],
[
"mechanisms",
"mechanisms"
],
[
"satori",
"satori"
]
],
"qualifier": "Zen Buddhism",
"raw_glosses": [
"(Zen Buddhism) A story about a Zen master and his student, sometimes like a riddle, other times like a fable, which has become an object of Zen study, and which, when meditated upon, may unlock mechanisms in the Zen student’s mind leading to satori."
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow",
"text": "Gibberish. Or else a koan that Achtfaden isn’t equipped to master, a transcendent puzzle that could lead him to some moment of light.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age, paperback edition, Fourth Estate, page 303",
"text": "As always the koan “Why, Why am I here, why here” begins in her head, but she beats it back like a housewife with a broom.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A riddle with no solution, used to provoke reflection on the inadequacy of logical reasoning, and to lead to enlightenment."
],
"links": [
[
"solution",
"solution"
],
[
"provoke",
"provoke"
],
[
"reflection",
"reflection"
],
[
"inadequacy",
"inadequacy"
],
[
"logical",
"logical"
],
[
"reasoning",
"reasoning"
],
[
"enlightenment",
"enlightenment"
]
]
},
{
"glosses": [
"A therapy technique used by Traditional Chinese medicinal physicians or medical practitioners to break a presenting patients habitual pattern of thinking that has been diagnosed as the primary cause of an illness or disease."
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈkəʊ.ɑːn/",
"tags": [
"UK"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈkoʊ.ɑn/",
"tags": [
"US"
]
},
{
"audio": "en-us-koan.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/42/En-us-koan.ogg/En-us-koan.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/En-us-koan.ogg",
"tags": [
"US"
],
"text": "Audio (US)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "kōan"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "nan-hbl",
"lang": "Chinese",
"roman": "kong-àn",
"sense": "zen story",
"tags": [
"Hokkien"
],
"word": "公案"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "gōng'àn",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "公案"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "kōan"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "zen story",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "Koan"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "koan"
},
{
"code": "ga",
"lang": "Irish",
"sense": "zen story",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "cóán"
},
{
"alt": "こうあん",
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "kōan",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "公案"
},
{
"code": "ko",
"lang": "Korean",
"roman": "hwadu",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "화두"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "koán",
"sense": "zen story",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "коа́н"
},
{
"code": "vi",
"lang": "Vietnamese",
"sense": "zen story",
"word": "công án"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "aporia"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "kōan"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "aporie"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "koan"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "aporia"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "riddle without solution",
"word": "aporía"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"koan"
],
"word": "koan"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.