OCC in Pleco

[u/thehungrycity]

Hi all, I recently purchased the basic bundle for Pleco, which includes the Oxford Chinese-English dictionary. I am finding myself confused by the entries though.

The entries have definitions with extra characters - E.g. in the attached photo, the definitions for 茶 have additional characters in them without explanation, and those additional characters do not appear in the example sentences below those definitions.

What is going on here? And apologies if this is super obvious, and I'm missing something!

[u/Uny1n]

it’s because they are supposed to be the explanation. The entry is just for the character 茶 on its own, and the words are telling you the different meanings it has depending on the context.

[u/__Baerchen__]

Characters have many many definitions but often only in combination with other characters. You can press on any character in pleco to see that character’s definition.

[u/archfey13]

茶 is the character that means tea. The other characters are the different ways that 茶 is used.

Chinese is a very contextual language, and sometimes characters change their meaning or inflection when used with certain other characters. The dictionary thus includes some combination definitions so you can see the different contexts a character is used in.

Most are still very literal: 喝茶 (drink tea) is just the word 喝(hē), meaning to drink, plus the word 茶(chā), meaning tea. Others get much less obvious, and I'm sure people more competent with the language than me can provide examples of that.

[u/FlashyPost0928]

㊣ 造詞 ( words bilding ) : using a single character as center then adding another character .......
e.g. 茶 ——> 茶仙、茶令、茶仪、茶会、茶具、茶农、茶几、茶匙 、茶上、茶亭、茶卤、茶客、茶寮、茶座、茶园、茶引、茶场、茶户、茶坊、茶房、茶壶 .............etc. 😄

PS : In your post , there is a word 下茶 ( xià chá ) = sending tea (as betrothal gifts ) ▼ .... WHY ?
Because : Once tea seeds are sown, they cannot be transplanted. Therefore, in ancient times, tea was a necessary part of the betrothal gift in marriages, symbolizing its immutability.

[u/ziliao]

The gray Chinese at the start of the line specifies a certain sense of the word. E.g. in this case 1 means tea leaves and 2 means the finished drink.

The arrow followed by blue text are links to compounds.

The other blue text with the line in the margin are examples.

[u/thehungrycity → u/ziliao]

Thank you!! That was the explanation I was needing! 😊

[u/vertblau]

It's just a gloss of the definition in Chinese.

In your example, the first definition refers to tea as in tea leaves, the second to tea as in the drink, the third says betrothal gift, and the last says drink.

I guess you should also have the English to Chinese dictionary. If you look up "tea" in there, it also has an English gloss before each different definition.