lún
noun #29,378

Meanings

  1. 1 (bound form) logical sequence; orderly arrangement
  2. 2 used in transliterations

Examples

HSK 6
Nápòlún shì Fǎguó lìshǐ shàng zhùmíng de huángdì.
Napoleon was a famous emperor in French history.
HSK 7-9
Kūnlún Shān shì Zhōngguó zhùmíng de shānmài.
The Kunlun Mountains are a famous mountain range in China.

Tips

usage
rarely appears alone in modern Chinese. It functions mainly as a bound morpheme in names: 昆仑 (Kunlun Mountains), 拿破仑 (Napoleon), 库仑 (Coulomb, the unit of electric charge). In its classical sense it means 'orderly sequence of thought.'

Components

radical
rén
person
Top - pictograph of a striding figure seen from the side, here the indexing radical. is the simplified form of , where the top (gathering roof) was reduced to plain . Today lives mostly inside compounds like 昆仑 (the Kunlun mountains) and as phonetic in / / .
semantic
ladle; spoon
Bottom - pictograph of a ladle or short curved knife. In traditional the bottom was (bundle of bamboo slips), simplified to this cleaner two-stroke . Carries the 'orderly arrangement' sense that gave its meaning: things laid out by category - surviving in discuss-orderly, ethics-relations, wheel-rotation.

Stroke Order

lún