美言

Mandarin · pinyin měi yán

Meanings

  1. to put in a good word (for sb)
  2. (literary) beautiful words; elegant expression
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Characters in this entry

美
měi · beautiful, pretty; pleasing
言
yán · words, speech; speak, say; Kangxi radical 149
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

3–2 · mei3 yan2

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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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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

verb

  1. to put in a good word for somebody
  2. (archaic)(literary) words of praise or flattery

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

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