飯碗

简 饭碗 · 繁 飯碗
Mandarin · pinyin fàn wǎn

Meanings

  1. rice bowl
  2. fig. livelihood
  3. job
  4. way of making a living
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Characters in this entry

飯
fàn · cooked rice; food; meal
碗
wǎn · bowl, small dish
饭
fàn · cooked rice; food, meal
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–3 · fan4 wan3

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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.

飯碗 · find source passages ↗ · 饭碗 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

faan6 wun2

Cantonese word readings for 飯碗. 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

  1. (literally) bowl of rice; rice bowl
  2. (metonymic, informal) way of making a living; livelihood; job; career; bread and butter

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

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