Online Compound Character Dictionary?

[bluetortilla]

I need an online dictionary that will give me compounds regardless of the order. For example, today in trying to compose a list of idioms from a handwritten paper, I found I could read 忙 in one word but not the character preceding it. If it were text I could write it with a trackpad but since I could not decipher the top (冠?) radical because of the cursive handwriting, I have a hole in my list until I ask a Chinese person to read it for me (or post a pic of it here lol).

 

If a dictionary of this kind isn't available online, I would consider buying one of the optional Pleco dictionaries or other as well. It's about time I bought a comprehensive Chinese-Chinese dictionary anyway. 

 

 

[Nathan Mao]

I was going to recommend a Reverse Dictionary, but then I realized you were talking about online dictionaries.

 

You kids these days.　You have no idea how easy you have it with all the online programs and materials available.  When I was starting out, we had study Chinese uphill!  Both ways! In the snow! Barefoot!

 

In any case, KT Dict for iPad works pretty well.  It will return the character in any position of a combo or chengyu.  It will sometimes find the right combo if I type in English pinyin because I'm too lazy to switch to a pinyin-entry Chinese keyboard or the handwriting input "keyboard" (which I think are actually available from the iPad itself, and not KT Dict).

[roddy]

Do you know you can do a wildcard search in Pleco? Useful for this kind of thing. 

[Ruben von Zwack]

When I was starting out, we had study Chinese uphill!  Both ways! In the snow! Barefoot!

 

Luxury!

I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, and study twenty-nine hours a day with an old paper dictionary, radical-index only!

But you try and tell the young people today that!

(source: Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen)

[mikelove]

No need for a wildcard search or for a paid dictionary upgrade, just look up the character, tap on it and tap on the "Words" tab. Sorted by frequency so the most common word containing the character (in any position) will go on top.

[bluetortilla]

Thanks! Pleco it is then...

 

By the way you old timers I'll be 50 next week and when I was a yungin  I used Spahn and Kandinsy's Kanji and Kana as my bible for (Japanese) 漢字 and occasionally referenced the 国語辞典 my father-in-law gave me. But Spahn's book was dynamite- extremely well organized and cross-referenced. It seemed I needed little else.

 

The internet is a blessing in so many ways but I also waste heaps of time searching up dead ends, half-baked resources, waiting for slow servers to load, and there is the ever-present need to be resourceful amongst so many options (e.g. after a web search on my 'computer' it didn't even occur to me to look at Pleco on my 'pad' for some reason.) I did write here, which is an invaluable resource I never had as a younger student. 

 

Ah well, it's all good. I could have also asked the real live guard man outside what the character was, and practiced some Chinese at the same time! That's an old school solution.