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耄

Mandarin · pinyin mào

extremely aged (in one's 80s or 90s)
octogenarian
nonagenarian

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耄: mào · elderly person; very old, senile

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

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Mandarin tones

4 · mao4

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1character link37same-tone records

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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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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

mou6

Cantonese word readings for 耄. 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.

character · Etymology 1

(literary) very old; senile
(obsolete on its own in Standard Chinese) befuddled; confused

character · Etymology 2

(Hokkien) sunken in; shriveled; emaciated (especially the mouth of an old person)
(Hokkien) to chew slowly as a toothless person
(Mainland China Hokkien) to shrivel; to cave in; to sink in
(Mainland China Hokkien) to embezzle; to misappropriate

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

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