鼎 (dǐng): ancient bronze cauldron (ritual…

Measure Word

一座大鼎 zuò

Meanings

1 ancient bronze cauldron (ritual cooking vessel with three or four legs)
2 tripod cauldron
3 (fig.) emblem of state power

Characters

鼎

dǐng

ancient bronze tripod cauldron / emblem of state

Examples

博物馆里展出了一件商代青铜鼎。

Bówùguǎn lǐ zhǎnchū le yī jiàn Shāng dài qīngtóng dǐng.

The museum displays a bronze cauldron from the Shang Dynasty.

问鼎中原意味着争夺天下。

Wèndǐng Zhōngyuán yìwèizhe zhēngduó tiānxià.

To 'question the cauldron of the Central Plains' means to contend for dominion over all of China.

Tips

culture

In ancient China, the 鼎 was far more than a cooking pot — it was the supreme emblem of state power and legitimacy. The legendary Nine Tripod Cauldrons (九鼎, Jiǔ Dǐng) were said to symbolize the nine regions of China, and possession of them signified the right to rule. The phrase 问鼎 (to question the cauldron) became the idiom for challenging for supreme power. The 鼎 remains one of the most iconic symbols in Chinese civilization.

Components

pictograph

鼎 dǐng

ancient bronze cauldron

鼎 is its own Kangxi radical — a complete pictograph. The upper square depicts the body and decorative ears of a three-legged ritual cauldron; the splayed strokes below picture the legs. As a self-radical it does not decompose. These cauldrons were emblems of Zhou-era state power.

Radical

Tripod Kangxi #206

A near-self-contained radical: 鼎 indexes itself plus a tiny set of inscription-era variants (鼐, 鼒) for differently sized ritual cauldrons. The graph preserves the ear-handles, body, and three legs of the bronze vessel. Almost never appears as a productive component in modern compounds — it survives mainly through 鼎 itself.