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煞

Mandarin · pinyin shā#

Mandarin · pinyin shà#

fiend
demon
very
(Tw) SARS (loanword)

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煞: shā · malignant deity; baleful, noxious; strike dead

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

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Mandarin tones

1 · sha1

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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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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

saat3

Cantonese word readings for 煞. 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.

character · Etymology 1

(alt-of, alternative) alternative form of 殺 /杀 (“to kill”)
to stop; to halt
to weaken; to reduce
to tighten
(Northern Wu) to satisfy; to quench (esp. a desire)
to end; to conclude; to terminate; to finish
Used as a hyperbolical intensifying complement.
(Hokkien) to stop and give up; to abandon; to leave it be; to leave it at that
(Hokkien) to prevent; to restrain; to suppress; to hold back
(Taiwanese Hokkien) to be wounded by evil spirits

character · Etymology 2

evil spirit; demon
A pre-predicate intensifier: very; extremely
(Hokkien) unexpectedly; surprisingly; instead
(Hokkien) how; how can it be that (used in rhetorical questions)
(Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou Hokkien) at once; immediately
Variant pronunciation for the intensifying complement.
(obsolete) although

character · Etymology 3

(Early Mandarin) what

character · Etymology 4

(Hokkien) to get hit with a strong feeling; to get infatuated with; to long for

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

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