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老奸巨猾

Mandarin · pinyin lǎo jiān jù huá

cunning
crafty
wily old fox

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Characters in this entry

老: lǎo · old, aged; experienced; Kangxi radical 125
奸: jiān · crafty, villainous, false
巨: jù · large, great, enormous; chief
猾: huá · crafty, cunning, shrewd; deceitful

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

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Mandarin tones

3–1–4–2 · lao3 jian1 ju4 hua2

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4character links1same-tone record

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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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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

lou5 gaan1 geoi6 waat6

Cantonese word readings for 老奸巨猾. 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 be extremely cunning and crafty; to be a wily old fox; to be an old hand at trickery and deception

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

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