First came the Celts in 600 B.C.
CHINESE DICTIONARY ENTRY
公元前
BCE (before the Common Era)
IN A VIDEO公元前
See this word with its surrounding sentence, pinyin, translation, and timestamp.
DEFINITIONS & USAGE
Meaning and common use
01
BCE (before the Common Era)
02
BC (before Christ)
REAL CORPUS EXAMPLES
How 公元前 actually appears in real sentences.
These sentences are copied from the Tatoeba corpus, so they are real usage rather than generated text. 公元前 appears in 5 of the 89,190 sentences we searched.
Many important historical events took place 7000 years B.C.
Taoism was founded on the teachings of Laozi, a sage born in 604 B.C. in present-day Henan Province.
COMMON COLLOCATIONS
Words that keep company with 公元前.
Counted from the same corpus: the word that most often comes directly before, and directly after, 公元前.
Directly before
- 是公元前1
- 在公元前1
Directly after
- 公元前七千年3
- 公元前六零1
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
Where this entry comes from
The HSK level, part of speech, and pronunciation come from the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus. The English definitions come from CC-CEDICT. Corpus sentences, collocations, and the frequency figure come from the Tatoeba Chinese sentence export and are counted rather than written, so nothing on this page is invented. Usage notes and the hand-written examples that appear higher up exist only for a handful of entries.
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Vocabulary levels and parts of speech from the HSK 3.1 syllabus. This compiled dictionary is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
COMMON QUESTIONS
About 公元前
What does 公元前 mean in Chinese?
公元前 (gōngyuánqián) means BCE (before the Common Era).
How do you pronounce 公元前?
公元前 is pronounced gōngyuánqián.
Is 公元前 an HSK word?
公元前 is on the list of the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus.
SEE IT IN CONTEXT
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