君子之交

Mandarin · pinyin jūn zǐ zhī jiāo

Meanings

  1. friendship between gentlemen, insipid as water (idiom, from Zhuangzi 莊子 Zhuāng zǐ)
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Characters in this entry

君
jūn · sovereign, monarch, ruler, chief, prince
子
zǐ · offspring, child; fruit, seed of; first earthly branch
之
zhī · marks preceding phrase as modifier of following phrase; it, him her, them; go to
交
jiāo · mix; intersect; exchange, communicate; deliver
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

1–3–1–1 · jun1 zi3 zhi1 jiao1

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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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君子之交 · jun1 zi3 zhi1 jiao1
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 20,451
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record君子之交 君子之交 [jun1 zi3 zhi1 jiao1] /friendship between gentlemen, insipid as water (idiom, from Zhuangzi 莊子|庄子[Zhuang1 zi3])/