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大費周章

简大费周章 · 繁大費周章

Mandarin · pinyin dà fèi zhōu zhāng

to take great pains
to go to a lot of trouble

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Characters in this entry

大: dà · big, great, vast, large, high
費: Look up this written character
周: zhōu · Zhou dynasty; circumference
章: zhāng · composition; chapter, section
费: fèi · expenses, expenditures, fee

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

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Mandarin tones

4–4–1–1 · da4 fei4 zhou1 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.

大費周章 · find source passages ↗ · 大费周章 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

daai6 fai3 zau1 zoeng1

Cantonese word readings for 大費周章. 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) to spend a lot of time and effort to handle a complicated matter; to go to a lot of trouble to handle a difficult matter

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

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