Word.ws English Dictionary

Peking

Syllables: Pe·king/piːˈkɪŋ/

Peking is the dated form of Beijing.

Meaning of Beijing

Proper noun

Beijing

  1. A direct-administered municipality, the capital city of China.
    • Liu Lao-zheng sidled right up to Zao-hua and said: “That’s right. I went to Beijing [Peking] to visit with my daughter. Zao-hua, I hear that you have become the workpoint recorder.”[…]
    • Liu Lao-zheng pulled out an abacus from a sack he was carrying over his shoulder. “Huala, huala,” he shook it several times and said: “I bought one in Beijing. I’ll lend it to you to use.”1976 [1966], Hao Ran, “Debut”, in Wong Kam-ming, transl., Revolutionary Literature in China: An Anthology, White Plains, New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 92
  2. (metonymically) The government of the People's Republic of China.
    • In Beijing’s view, in the absence of an explicit treaty provision, the central line of the main channel—the Thalweg principle—provided a legal basis for delimiting the boundary in the two rivers. On this basis, Beijing claimed that 600 of the rivers’ 700 islands—including Zhenbao Island on the...1980, Melvin Gurton, Byong-Moo Hwang, China under Threat: The Politics of Strategy and Diplomacy, Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 210
    Synonyms:
    Zhongnanhai

Forms of Peking

alternative formPachin
alternative formPaquin
alternative formPekin
alternative formPequin
alternative formPeh-king

Origin of Peking

c. 1655 romanization of the Nanking court dialect Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 北京 (Běijīng), reinforced by Postal Romanization from before the modern palatalization of [k] to [t͡ɕ]. The early Portuguese and Jesuits such as Francis Xavier used the spelling Paquim; Abraham Ortelius used C. Paquin for his 1572 Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas; Italian Jesuit Martino Martini used Peking in his 1654 Latin De Bello Tartarico Historia and 1655 Novus Atlas Sinensis, which were quickly translated into English and later used by Joan Blaeu for his 1665 Atlas Maior. Peter Heylyn's Cosmographie changed its spelling from Paquin in the 1652 edition to Peking in the 1658 edition, but both Pekin and Peking were used interchangeably in English until the Chinese Imperial Post adopted Peking as its official transcription in the 1890s. (Note that Peking is not derived from Wade-Giles romanization- see Pei-ching and Peiching.)

Words formed from Peking

Phrases with Peking

Words that rhyme with Peking

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about Peking

What is Peking the dated form of?
Peking is the dated form of Beijing.
How do you pronounce Peking?
Peking is pronounced /piːˈkɪŋ/.

Words near Peking in the dictionary

  1. Pekin ducks
  2. Pekin robin
  3. Pekin robins
  4. Pekinese
  5. Pekineses
  6. Peking
  7. Peking duck
  8. Peking Man
  9. Peking opera
  10. Peking operas
  11. Peking ravioli

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Peking (page history and authors); Beijing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Peking.wav.

Cite this entry: “Peking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/peking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.