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做眼色

Mandarin · pinyin zuò yǎn sè

to give sb a meaningful look

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Characters in this entry

做: zuò · work, make; act
眼: yǎn · eye; eyelet, hole, opening
色: sè · color, tint, hue, shade; form, body; beauty, desire for beauty; Kangxi radical 139

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

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Mandarin tones

4–3–4 · zuo4 yan3 se4

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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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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

zou6 ngaan5 sik1

Cantonese word readings for 做眼色. 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 tip somebody the wink; to wink at somebody; to give someone a meaningful glance

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

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