Ciyuan

thumb|Spine of the Commercial Press single-volume 1974 edition The Ciyuan or '''''Tz'u-yüan''' was the first major Chinese dictionary linguistically structured around words (ci ) instead of individual characters (zi ) used to write them. The Commercial Press published the first edition Ciyuan in 1915, and reissued it in various formats, including a 1931 supplement, and a fully revised 1979–1984 edition. The latest (3rd) edition was issued in 2015 to commemorate the centenary anniversary of its first publication.

==Contents and significance== In Chinese terminology, the Ciyuan is a cidian ( "word/phrase dictionary") for spoken or written expressions, as opposed to a zidian (, lit. "character/logograph dictionary") for written Chinese characters. A character dictionary contains only the definition(s) and pronunciation(s) for a character in isolation, whereas a dictionary of words contains both individual characters and characters in words. Whereas a dictionary of discrete characters would have separate entries for zi (, "character") and dian (, "canon; standard"), it would not enter the compound zidian (, "dictionary"); a dictionary of words would include entries for zi, dian, and zidian. The Chinese language, both written and spoken, is primarily made up of words and phrases, not independent characters.