落草

Mandarin · pinyin luò cǎo

Meanings

  1. to take to the woods to become an outlaw
  2. (dialect) to be born (Etymology: in former times, a bed of straw or grass was used as padding during childbirth)
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Characters in this entry

落
luò · fall, drop; net income, surplus
草
cǎo · grass, straw, thatch, herbs
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–3 · luo4 cao3

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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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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 become a bandit in the mountains and woods
  2. (dialectal) to be born

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

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

落草 · luo4 cao3
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 95,094
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record落草 落草 [luo4 cao3] /to take to the woods to become an outlaw/(dialect) to be born (Etymology: in former times, a bed of straw or grass was used as padding during childbirth)/