養活

简 养活 · 繁 養活
Mandarin · pinyin yǎng huo

Meanings

  1. to provide for
  2. to keep (animals, a family etc)
  3. to raise animals
  4. to feed and clothe
  5. support
  6. the necessities of life
  7. to give birth
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Characters in this entry

養
yǎng · raise, rear, bring up; support
活
huó · live, exist, survive; lively
养
yǎng · raise, rear, bring up; support
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

3–5 · yang3 huo5

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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.

養活 · find source passages ↗ · 养活 · find source passages ↗

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 3 senses · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

joeng5 wut6

Cantonese word readings for 養活. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

CanCLID contributors · CC BY 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

verb

  1. (colloquial) to support (a family financially); to feed; to provide for
  2. (colloquial) to raise; to rear (domestic animals)
  3. (dialectal) to give birth to

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

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

養活 · yang3 huo5
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 120,101
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record養活 养活 [yang3 huo5] /to provide for/to keep (animals, a family etc)/to raise animals/to feed and clothe/support/the necessities of life/to give birth/