肝

Mandarin · pinyin gān

Meanings

  1. liver (Classifier: 葉 yè)
  2. (slang) to put in long hours, typically late into the night, playing (a video game)
  3. (of a video game) involving a lot of repetition in order to progress; grindy
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Characters in this entry

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

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Mandarin tones

1 · gan1

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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 · 4 senses · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

gon1

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

CanCLID contributors · CC BY 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

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

character

  1. liver (Classifier: 葉/叶; 個/个)
  2. (figurative) mind; thoughts
  3. (video games, neologism) to grind; to repeat a task day and night, which may exhaust the liver, in order to achieve a specific goal
  4. (video games, neologism) grindy

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

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

肝 · gan1
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 90,019
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record肝 肝 [gan1] /liver (CL:葉|叶[ye4])/(slang) to put in long hours, typically late into the night, playing (a video game)/(of a video game) involving a lot of repetition in order to progress; grindy/