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車裂

简车裂 · 繁車裂

Mandarin · pinyin chē liè

to tear off sb's four limbs and head using five horse-drawn carts (historical form of capital punishment)

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Characters in this entry

車: chē · cart, vehicle; carry in a cart; Kangxi radical 159
裂: liè · split, crack, break open; rend
车: chē · cart, vehicle; carry in cart

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

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Mandarin tones

1–4 · che1 lie4

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車裂 · find source passages ↗ · 车裂 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

ce1 lit6

Cantonese word readings for 車裂. 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.

verb

(archaic) to quarter; to tie up someone's limbs to several wagons, then pull them apart, limb by limb (an ancient form of punishment)

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

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