DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT
小年夜
Mandarin · pinyin xiǎo nián yè
Meanings
- (coll.) the night before lunisolar New Year's Eve
- (Tw) the night before New Year's Eve (either lunisolar or Gregorian)
- (old) Little New Year's Eve (the 23rd or 24th of the 12th lunisolar month, when people offer sacrifices to the kitchen god)
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Mandarin tones
3–2–4 · xiao3 nian2 ye4
Compare attested words with these syllables ↗Dictionary tones. Connected speech can change their realization.
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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.
Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 2 senses
Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section
Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.
noun
- The 24th day of the last month of the Chinese lunar calendar, where people make sacrifices to the kitchen god. In the northern areas it's the 23rd day, in the coastal regions it's the 25th, and in some areas it's the 15th or 16th day of the first month of the new lunar year.
- the day before the Chinese New Year's Eve (大年夜)
Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history
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