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造孽

Mandarin · pinyin zào niè

to do evil
to commit sins

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Characters in this entry

造: zào · construct, build, make, begin; prepare
孽: niè · evil; son of concubine; ghost

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

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Mandarin tones

4–4 · zao4 nie4

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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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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

zou6 jip6

Cantonese word readings for 造孽. 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

(Buddhism) to sin; to do evil
(Ningbonese) to quarrel; to argue

adj

(Southwestern Mandarin, Huizhou, Xiang) pitiful; pitiable; poor

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

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