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大有文章

Mandarin · pinyin dà yǒu wén zhāng

some deeper meaning in this
more to it than meets the eye
there's sth behind all this

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Characters in this entry

大: dà · big, great, vast, large, high
有: yǒu · have, own, possess; exist
文: wén · literature, culture, writing
章: zhāng · composition; chapter, section

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

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Mandarin tones

4–3–2–1 · da4 you3 wen2 zhang1

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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 · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

daai6 jau5 man4 zoeng1

Cantonese word readings for 大有文章. 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.

phrase

(idiomatic) there's something behind all this; there's more to it than meets the eye

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

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