Read what something is taken or used as
以 A 為 B commonly presents A as being used, treated, or regarded as B. The roles of A and B are essential; the construction is more specific than matching two isolated function words.
以…為…
A reading procedure
- Identify A, the item taken or used.
- Identify B, its assigned role or characterization.
- Use context to distinguish practical use from a judgment.
The two words may occur in separate clauses; their mere co-occurrence is not a construction.
Compare
Search finds spelling; it does not automatically label every occurrence with this construction.
zimai · AI-assisted editorial notes · Editorial pilot · not independently reviewed. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Evidence and further study
Linked passages below provide the primary-text evidence for these editorial examples. The readings are not borrowed from, or endorsed by, the further-study references.
Kanseki Repository · pinned primary text witnesses
Textual evidence. Individual examples link to exact source files and lines.
Edwin G. Pulleyblank · Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar
Further study: word order, predication, nominalization, negation and complex sentences. Book content is not reproduced.
Robert Eno · Introduction to Literary Chinese, Part I
Further study: an academic primer with annotated readings and exercises. Not imported.
Introduction to Classical Chinese · Schonebaum and contributors
Further study: function words and reading lessons. CC BY-NC-SA material is not imported into this dataset.
Thesaurus Linguae Sericae
Further research: contextual historical senses and syntactic analysis. No TLS annotation import in this release.
2 examples in context
以萬物為芻狗
Treat the myriad things as straw dogs.
萬物 occupies A and 芻狗 occupies B in 以 A 為 B. The ceremonial image has its own interpretive history; the construction establishes a relation of treatment or regard, not a literal transformation into dogs.
Check your reading · Which item occupies B in 以 A 為 B?
芻狗.
以五百歲為春
Take five hundred years as a spring.
五百歲 is the interval assigned the role 春 in 以 A 為 B. The next clause assigns another interval as autumn. This imaginative scale comparison is source narrative, not a factual life-span measurement endorsed by zimai.
Check your reading · What occupies A in the construction?
五百歲.