The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary

Abstract

The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (CCD) is an authoritative single-volume general-purpose Chinese language dictionary published by The Commercial Press in Beijing, now into its 6th edition (2012). It was originally edited by Lyu Shuxiang and Ding Shusheng, two prominent Chinese linguists at the Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as a reference work on standard modern Chinese. Compilation of the dictionary was initiated in 1958 and trial editions were issued in 1960 and 1965, respectively, with a number of copies printed in 1973 for internal circulation and comments. However, due to the Great Cultural Revolution (1966–1975), the final draft was not completed until 1977, and the first edition was not published until 1978. It was the first dictionary in the People's Republic of China whose entries were arranged according to Hanyu pinyin, the official phonetic system for transcribing Chinese characters, with definitions and examples in simplified Chinese. The subsequent second through sixth editions were published respectively in 1983, 1996, 2002, 2005, and 2012 by The Commercial Press.