不食人間煙火
简 不食人间烟火 · 繁 不食人間煙火Meanings
- otherworldly; detached from the mundane concerns of ordinary life
Characters in this entry
- 不
- bù · no, not; un-; negative prefix
- 食
- shí · eat; meal; food; Kangxi radical 184
- 人
- rén · man; people; mankind; someone else
- 間
- Look up this written character
- 煙
- Look up this written character
- 火
- huǒ · fire, flame; burn; anger, rage
- 间
- jiān · midpoint, space; place, locality
- 烟
- yān · smoke, soot; opium; tobacco, cigarettes
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Mandarin tones
4–2–2–1–1–3 · bu4 shi2 ren2 jian1 yan1 huo3
Compare attested words with these syllables ↗Dictionary tones. Connected speech can change their realization.
Connected dictionary
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.
不食人間煙火 · find source passages ↗ · 不食人间烟火 · find source passages ↗
Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 3 senses · 1 Cantonese reading
Rime Cantonese 粵拼
bat1 sik6 jan4 gaan1 jin1 fo2
Cantonese word readings for 不食人間煙火. 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.
phrase
- (idiomatic) out of touch; no sense of the practical
- (idiomatic) other-worldly
- (idiomatic) to not eat anything
Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history
Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack