Chinese Reversible Words
Chinese writes its words with two characters, and nothing stops you reading them the other way round. Most of the time nothing comes of it; sometimes a second word comes out, and lives its own life beside the first. 牛奶 is milk, 奶牛 is a dairy cow. 故事 is a story, 事故 is an accident. The two words share both their characters and nothing else.
It is a classic trap for learners, and it is also the best way to remember both: you stop confusing two words once you have seen them side by side. So this page puts them side by side, one left and one right, with their reading and their meaning.
In pictures
The meaning flips
139 pairs whose two translations have nothing in common.
central point ; in one's thoughts ; in one's heart
to come and see ; to see a topic from a certain point of view
real estate ; landed estate ; landed property
close friend ; pal ; (social networking website) friend
to pass ; to spend (time) ; to survive
sense of movement (often in a static work of art) ; dynamic ; vivid
mechanism ; gear ; machine-operated
to let go ; to release
to divide (into) ; to split a bonus ; to break into
to make a round trip ; return journey ; back and forth
inner ; internal ; intrinsic
under one's control or administration ; subordinates ; (money etc) on hand
to start ; to put one's hand to ; to set about
to conduct oneself ; behavior ; conduct
happy ; joyous ; delighted
allocated area (for housing, industry etc) ; district
practice (customary action, as opposed to theory) ; practical
to deal with concrete matters ; pragmatic
to fall ; to drop ; to land (of projectile)
whereabouts ; to drop ; to fall
to give birth ; to grow (whiskers etc) ; to generate
to equate ; equal to
equal to ; having the same social class or status
(in) the past ; ahead ; forward
to be oriented towards ; orientation
guide
to appear (in a show etc) ; an appearance (on stage etc)
en route
midway
295 pairs in all.
Not every reversal is worth the same, and the page keeps them apart. The first kind flips the meaning: between "to lead" and "necktie", between "meeting" and "parliament", nothing is left in common. The second kind only shifts it: 互相 and 相互 both come out as "mutually", and what separates them is register and construction, not definition. Those are the harder ones, not the easier — no dictionary tells them apart, only usage does.
Linguists call these pairs reversible compounds; Chinese calls them 逆序词, "reversed-order words". The phenomenon is not a curiosity: most two-character words are loose enough a compound to survive both orders, and Chinese marks the job of each part by its place. In 牛奶, 牛 "ox" qualifies 奶 "milk"; in 奶牛 it is the other way round, and the animal takes the lead again.