城闕

简 城阙 · 繁 城闕
Mandarin · pinyin chéng què

Meanings

  1. watchtower on either side of a city gate
  2. (literary) city
  3. imperial palace
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Characters in this entry

城
chéng · castle; city, town; municipality
闕
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阙
quē · watch tower; palace
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2–4 · cheng2 que4

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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.

城闕 · find source passages ↗ · 城阙 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

seng4 kyut3

Cantonese word readings for 城闕. 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.

noun

  1. (literary) watchtower on either side of a city gate
  2. (literary) capital city
  3. (literary) palace

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

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