DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

閒話

简闲话 · 繁閒話

Mandarin · pinyin xián huà

casual conversation
chat
gossip
to talk about (whatever comes to mind)

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Characters in this entry

閒: Look up this written character
話: huà · speech, talk, language; dialect
闲: xián · fence, guard; defend; idle time
话: huà · speech, talk, language; dialect

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

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Mandarin tones

2–4 · xian2 hua4

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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.

閒話 · find source passages ↗ · 闲话 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

haan4 waa2

Cantonese word readings for 閒話. 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

(literary) to talk casually; to chat

noun

words of little importance; casual words; digression
gossip; rumour; word on the street
(Sujiahu Wu, Tiaoxi Wu and Yongjiang Wu) words; speech
(Sujiahu Wu, Tiaoxi Wu and Yongjiang Wu) language; dialect

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

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