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長夜

简长夜 · 繁長夜

Mandarin · pinyin cháng yè

long dark night
fig. long period of misery and oppression

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Characters in this entry

長: zhǎng · long; length; excel in; leader; Kangxi radical 168
夜: yè · night, dark; in night; by night
长: zhǎng · long; length; excel in; leader

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

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Mandarin tones

2–4 · chang2 ye4

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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.

長夜 · find source passages ↗ · 长夜 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

coeng4 je6

Cantonese word readings for 長夜. 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

(literary) long night; eternal night
(literary) dead and buried (which is metaphorically like a long night)
(literary) all night; whole night

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

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