天下
Meanings
CC-CEDICT
- 1.land under heaven
- 2.the whole world
- 3.the whole of China
- 4.realm
- 5.rule
CC-CEDICT · CC BY-SA
Wiktionary
- 1.the world; everything under the sky; all under heaven
- 2.China; the Chinese nation
- 3.society
- 4.state power; domination
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Etymology
Earliest attestations are in the Book of Documents, Classic of Poetry and bronze inscriptions such as that on the Western Zhou vessel Bin Gong Xu (豳公盨): Pines (2002) thinks it "likely that "originally tianxia referred to the area under the direct rule of the Son of Heaven [a.k.a. the Zhou king], and its limits might have shrunk together with the contraction of royal power". See there for more on the term's gradual semantic evolution through the Spring and Autumn period, Warring States period, until after Qin's wars of unification.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Stroke order
Components
Components from cjk-decomp · MIT
Characters
Example sentences
天下无不散之筵席。
All good things must come to an end.
天下没有免费的午餐。
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
天下没有白吃的午餐。
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Sentences from Tatoeba · CC-BY 2.0 FR
More examples & usage (AI)
Synonyms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Derived terms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA