Shuowen Jiezi is an online reference website dedicated to the historic Chinese dictionary compiled by Eastern Han scholar Xu Shen. It introduces the work’s importance as an early systematic study of Chinese character forms and origins, and presents its structure: fifteen volumes organized into 540 radicals, with entries for 9,353 characters and additional variant forms. The site offers searchable access to the text, including the original, full-text reading, annotations, and related introductory material.

Visitors can browse entries with seal-script and regular-script forms, radicals, pronunciation, and source explanations, or explore organized radical and component indexes. Its reference collection also links to resources such as the Kangxi Dictionary, a calligraphy dictionary, classical poetry, and a traditional almanac. Designed for online consultation and study, Shuowen Jiezi brings together character lookup, historical reference, and reading tools for people interested in Chinese language, writing, and classical scholarship.

The site also outlines the dictionary’s volumes and radical categories, helping users navigate its extensive contents