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大事

Mandarin · pinyin dà shì

major event
major political event (war or change of regime)
major social event (wedding or funeral)
(do sth) in a big way
Classifier: 件 jiàn, 樁 zhuāng

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Characters in this entry

大: dà · big, great, vast, large, high
事: shì · affair, matter, business; to serve; accident, incident

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

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Mandarin tones

4–4 · da4 shi4

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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.

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 2 senses · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

daai6 si6

Cantonese word readings for 大事. 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

important matter; big deal; major event; great thing

adv

in a big way

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

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