無緣

简 无缘 · 繁 無緣
Mandarin · pinyin wú yuán

Meanings

  1. to have no opportunity
  2. no way (of doing sth)
  3. no chance
  4. no connection
  5. not placed (in a competition)
  6. (in pop lyrics) no chance of love, no place to be together etc
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Characters in this entry

無
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緣
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无
wú · negative, no, not; Kangxi radical 71
缘
yuán · hem, margin; reason, cause; fate
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2–2 · wu2 yuan2

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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.

無緣 · find source passages ↗ · 无缘 · find source passages ↗

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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.

verb

  1. to have not the chance or luck (to do something)
  2. to have no way (of doing something); to not be in a position (to do something)

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

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

無緣 · wu2 yuan2
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 70,119
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record無緣 无缘 [wu2 yuan2] /to have no opportunity/no way (of doing sth)/no chance/no connection/not placed (in a competition)/(in pop lyrics) no chance of love, no place to be together etc/