鼎
Tap the pinyin to hear it
ancient cooking cauldron with two looped handles and three or four legs; pot (dialect); to enter upon a period of (classical); Kangxi radical 206; one of the 64 hexagrams of the Book of Changes
- HSK 3.0
- Level 7–9
- Strokes
- 12
- Radical
- 鼎 itself
- Structure
- Bottom enclosure 下包
- Traditional
- 鼎
- Common rank
- #1,609
- Unicode
- U+9F0E
Sound it out + =
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
How to remember it
old cooking pot · Heisig RSH #2251
eyeball + bunk beds + 片 slice
Keyword method from Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi.
Words with 鼎
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 三权鼎立 | separation of powers | |
| 鼎城区 | Dingcheng, a district of Changde City 常德市[Chang2 de2 Shi4], Hunan | |
| 三足鼎立 | (idiom) to form a tripartite balance of power | |
| 问鼎中原 | to plan to seize power of the whole country (idiom) | |
| 鼎力相助 | We are most grateful for your valuable assistance. | |
| 一言九鼎 | one word worth nine sacred tripods (idiom); words of enormous weight | |
| 福鼎市 | Fuding, a county-level city in Ningde City 寧德市|宁德市[Ning2 de2 Shi4], Fujian | |
| 鼎足之势 | competition between three rivals; tripartite confrontation | |
| 鼎湖区 | Dinghu, a district of Zhaoqing City 肇慶市|肇庆市[Zhao4 qing4 Shi4], Guangdong | |
| 问鼎轻重 | lit. to inquire whether the tripods are light or heavy (idiom); a laughable attempt to sei… | |
| 鼎盛时期 | flourishing period; golden age | |
| 香火鼎盛 | (of a temple) teeming with worshippers | |
| 鼎力 | (honorific) your kind efforts; thanks to your help | |
| 革故鼎新 | to discard the old and introduce the new (idiom); to innovate | |
| 大名鼎鼎 | grand reputation; renowned; famous | |
| 染指于鼎 | lit. dip one's finger in the tripod (idiom); fig. to get one's finger in the pie; to get a… | |
| 鼎鼎大名 | famous; celebrated | |
| 鼎新 | to innovate | |
| 鼎城 | see 鼎城區|鼎城区[Ding3 cheng2 Qu1] | |
| 定鼎 | lit. to set up the sacred tripods (following Yu the Great); to fix the capital; to found a… |