Shaanxi
Syllables: Shaan·xi/ʃɑːnˈʃiː/
Shaanxi proper noun: a province of China, including the Wei River valley and the fertile southern half of the Ordos Loop, comprising much of the Loess Plateau. Capital: Xi'an.
Proper noun
Shaanxi
- A province of China, including the Wei River valley and the fertile southern half of the Ordos Loop, comprising much of the Loess Plateau. Capital: Xi'an.
- The fact, therefore, that the Tae pings, when they raised the siege of Hwae king on the 1st September marched westwards by it into Shan se, shows that the Imperial forces were strong enough to prevent their descent by the Wei river.[1856, Thomas Taylor Meadows, The Chinese and their Rebellions, London: Smith, Elder & Co., →OCLC, page 176
- Under the Pinyin system, two neighboring provinces of northern China are both spelled "Shanxi". In this special case, one of the provinces is now spelled "Shaanxi", to indicate a different tone in the first syllable.1979 March 5, Jay Mathews, “China Is China, But Hangchow Is Hangzhou”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 Dec 2023
Shaanxi meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and Indonesian
Shaanxi in Hindi
- province of northwest China
- शान्शी śānśī
Shaanxi in Urdu
- province of northwest China
- شانسی śānsī
Shaanxi in Arabic
- province of northwest China
- شَانْشِي šānšī
Shaanxi in Indonesian
- province of northwest China
- Shaanxi
More languagesFewer languages
- Shaanxi in Vietnamese
- Thiểm Tây
Examples of Shaanxi in a sentence
- Three pieces of paper which may date back to between 73 and 49 BC were recently found in Fufeng county, Shaanxi province.1979 July, “2,000-year-old Paper”, in Eastern Horizon, volume XVIII, number 7, Hong Kong: Eastern Horizon Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 51:
- There is a tomb in Shaanxi province’s Huangling county which has long been honored as his.1979 August, Lan Cao, “Tomb of the Yellow Emperor”, in China Reconstructs, volume XXVIII, number 8, China Welfare Institute, →ISSN, →OCLC...
- The site is in Fengxiang County of Shaanxi Province, about 90 miles west of the ancient Yellow River capital of Xian.1986 June 16, “CHINESE TOMB FOUND TO BE VICTIM OF GRAVE ROBBERS”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 24 May...
- Twenty one people were killed in China after the roof of a coal mine collapsed in Lijiagou, in the central province Shaanxi, state media reported on Sunday.2019 January 13, “21 die in China coal mine collapse”, in EFE, archived from the original on 13 Jan 2019:
Forms of Shaanxi
| alternative form | Shanhsi |
|---|---|
| alternative form | Shensi |
| alternative form | Shense |
| alternative form | Shensy |
| alternative form | Shen-hsi |
| alternative form | Shenhsi |
| alternative form | Xensi |
| alternative form | Xienxi |
| alternative form | Sciensii |
| alternative form | Chensi |
| alternative Hanyu-Pinyin proscribed | Shanxi |
| alternative form | Shaangxi |
| alternative form | Sha'anxi |
| alternative form | Shenxi |
Origin of Shaanxi
From a modified form of the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Chinese 陝西 /陕西 (Shǎnxī, “West of the Shan [Pass]”). The double-a spelling, used certainly to avoid homography with Shanxi (山西, of shān rather than shǎn), is not a feature of Hanyu Pinyin and cannot be observed outside reference to Shaanxi (see also: Ningshaan, Shaanbei, Shaan-Gan-Ning, Shaanzhong). It is likely inherited from the pre-Pinyin Latinxua Sin Wenz system devised and employed by Communist linguists, which was toneless and employed "irregular spellings" for undesirable homographs. The pairs Shaansi (陝西 /陕西) and Shansi (山西) appear (for the first time?) in the influential Sin Wenz primer 《中國話寫法拉丁化——理論·原則·方案》 (1935). An alternative theory is that the double-a spelling is from the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization system, where the third tone is spelled by doubling a vowel (Shaanshi 陝西 /陕西 vs. Shanshi 山西), but this is less likely considering the history of Gwoyeu Romatzyh and Sin Wenz, including the political and ideological rivalry between the two systems.
Words that rhyme with Shaanxi
Questions about Shaanxi
- What does Shaanxi mean?
- Shaanxi means a province of China, including the Wei River valley and the fertile southern half of the Ordos Loop, comprising much of the Loess Plateau. Capital: Xi'an.
- What is Shaanxi in Hindi?
- Shaanxi in Hindi is शान्शी (śānśī). See Shaanxi meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use Shaanxi in a sentence?
- Three pieces of paper which may date back to between 73 and 49 BC were recently found in Fufeng county, Shaanxi province.
- What part of speech is Shaanxi?
- Shaanxi is a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce Shaanxi?
- Shaanxi is pronounced /ʃɑːnˈʃiː/.
Words near Shaanxi in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Shaanxi (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Shaanxi.wav.
Cite this entry: “Shaanxi.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shaanxi. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.