聖賢

简 圣贤 · 繁 聖賢
Mandarin · pinyin shèng xián

Meanings

  1. a sage
  2. wise and holy man
  3. virtuous ruler
  4. Buddhist lama
  5. wine
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Characters in this entry

聖
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賢
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圣
shèng · holy, sacred
贤
xián · virtuous, worthy, good; able
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–2 · sheng4 xian2

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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.

聖賢 · find source passages ↗ · 圣贤 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

sing3 jin4

Cantonese word readings for 聖賢. 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.

noun

  1. (literary) sage; sages and worthies, virtuous ruler, Buddhist lama.
  2. (chiefly Confucianism) a sage.

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

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