DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

夏商周

Mandarin · pinyin Xià Shāng zhōu

Xia, Shang and Zhou, the earliest named Chinese dynasties

Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

夏: xià · summer; great, grand, big
商: shāng · commerce, business, trade
周: zhōu · Zhou dynasty; circumference

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

Explore the spelling

Mandarin tones

4–1–1 · Xia4 Shang1 zhou1

Compare attested words with these syllables ↗

Dictionary tones. Connected speech can change their realization.

Connected dictionary

3character 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.

夏商周 · find source passages ↗

Explore Classical grammar ↗

Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

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

name

the Xia (c. 2100 – c. 1600 BC), Shang (c. 1600–1046 BC) and Zhou dynasties (1046–256 BC)

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

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