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CC-CEDICT dictionary is initially difficult to search efficiently and quickly.
The first key to searching the dictionary is knowing what the dictionary format looks like.
The format for all CC-CEDICT entries whether they are a single character or a word composed of 2 or more characters are as follows:
traditional_character simplified_character [pinyin pronunciation(s)] /English meanings/
For example, for the character 屮, which happens to be a radical, the entry is:
屮 屮 [che4] /plants sprouting/
It happens to be the case that the traditional is the same as the simplified in the example above. In addition, the dictionary tells you what measure word goes with the respective noun. You will know the measure word by looking at CL:
For example:
鼻孔 鼻孔 [bi2 kong3] /nostril/CL:隻|只[zhi1]/
For 鼻孔, the measure word is 隻 in Traditional and 只 in Simplified.
Let’s try an example searching for a character, where the Traditional is different than the Simplified.
Let’s try 國:
國 国 [guo2] /country/nation/state/national/CL:個|个[ge4]/
You can see, that the traditional is 國, and the simplified is 国.
Now for a 2 character word
Let’s try 中國 which means China. The entry is:
中國 中国 [Zhong1 guo2] /China/
中國 is the way to write China in Chinese using Traditional Characters. 中国 is the way to write China in Chinese using Simplified Characters.
For information about how to search the CC-CEDICT Chinese Dictionary, please read this page.