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上天

Mandarin · pinyin shàng tiān

Heaven; Providence; God
the sky above
to fly skywards
(euphemism) to die; to pass away
the previous day (or days)

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Characters in this entry

上: shàng · top; superior, highest; go up, send up
天: tiān · sky, heaven; god, celestial

Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–1 · shang4 tian1

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Read this spelling in Classical texts

Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 5 senses · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

soeng6 tin1

Cantonese word readings for 上天. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

noun

Heaven; God
the sky above

verb

(intransitive, verb-object) to go up to the sky
(euphemistic) to pass away
(colloquial) to cause big trouble

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack