DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

土生土長

简土生土长 · 繁土生土長

Mandarin · pinyin tǔ shēng tǔ zhǎng

(idiom) (of people) born and raised in the locality; (of art forms, political parties, enterprises, products etc) developed locally from the outset; wholly indigenous

Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

土: tǔ · soil, earth; items made of earth
生: shēng · life, living, lifetime; birth
長: zhǎng · long; length; excel in; leader; Kangxi radical 168
长: zhǎng · long; length; excel in; leader

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

Explore the spelling

Mandarin tones

3–1–3–3 · tu3 sheng1 tu3 zhang3

Compare attested words with these syllables ↗

Dictionary tones. Connected speech can change their realization.

Connected dictionary

4character links

Explore word families ↗Compare pronunciations ↗Open character structure ↗

Counts describe dictionary records, not word frequency or semantic similarity. Source identities stay separate.

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.

土生土長 · find source passages ↗ · 土生土长 · find source passages ↗

Explore Classical grammar ↗

Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

tou2 sang1 tou2 zoeng2

Cantonese word readings for 土生土長. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

CanCLID contributors · CC BY 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

adj

locally born and bred

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

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack