懂事

Mandarin · pinyin dǒng shì

Meanings

  1. to grow beyond the naivete of childhood; to be aware of what is going on in the world
  2. (esp. of a child) sensible; thoughtful; intelligent
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Characters in this entry

懂
dǒng · understand, comprehend
事
shì · affair, matter, business; to serve; accident, incident
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

3–4 · dong3 shi4

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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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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

dung2 si6

Cantonese word readings for 懂事. 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.

adj

  1. (usually said of a child) sensible; capable; good; thoughtful; smart; well-behaved

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

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

懂事 · dong3 shi4
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 43,374
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record懂事 懂事 [dong3 shi4] /to grow beyond the naivete of childhood; to be aware of what is going on in the world/(esp. of a child) sensible; thoughtful; intelligent/