DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

詩話

简诗话 · 繁詩話

Mandarin · pinyin shī huà

notes on poetry, an essay genre consisting of informal commentary on poems and poets and their lives (old)
a genre of narrative literature interspersing prose with poetry, popular in the Tang and Song dynasties

Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

詩: Look up this written character
話: huà · speech, talk, language; dialect
诗: shī · poetry; poem, verse, ode
话: huà · speech, talk, language; dialect

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

Explore the spelling

Mandarin tones

1–4 · shi1 hua4

Compare attested words with these syllables ↗

Dictionary tones. Connected speech can change their realization.

Connected dictionary

3character links1same-tone record

Explore word families ↗Compare pronunciations ↗Open character structure ↗

Counts describe dictionary records, not word frequency or semantic similarity. Source identities stay separate.

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.

詩話 · find source passages ↗ · 诗话 · find source passages ↗

Explore Classical grammar ↗

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.

noun

poetry talks, such as informal remarks on poetry or poets, a literary genre very popular with the Song and Ming scholars, usually telling why certain famous lines were written and under what circumstances
vernacular stories interspersed with poems

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

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