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做文章

Mandarin · pinyin zuò wén zhāng

to make an issue of sth
to fuss
to make a song and dance

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Characters in this entry

做: zuò · work, make; act
文: wén · literature, culture, writing
章: zhāng · composition; chapter, section

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

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Mandarin tones

4–2–1 · zuo4 wen2 zhang1

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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

zou6 man4 zoeng1

Cantonese word readings for 做文章. 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.

verb

(verb-object) to write an essay; to write a composition
(verb-object) to make a big thing out of a certain matter to achieve one's own goals

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

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