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三人成虎

Mandarin · pinyin sān rén chéng hǔ

three men talking makes a tiger (idiom); repeated rumor becomes a fact

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Characters in this entry

三: sān · three
人: rén · man; people; mankind; someone else
成: chéng · completed, finished, fixed
虎: hǔ · tiger; brave, fierce; surname

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

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Mandarin tones

1–2–2–3 · san1 ren2 cheng2 hu3

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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 · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

saam1 jan4 sing4 fu2

Cantonese word readings for 三人成虎. 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.

proverb

what is told repeatedly becomes true; if something is repeated by many, it may be accepted as a universal truth

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

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