仙 (xiān): immortal

Measure Word

一位仙 wèi

Meanings

1 immortal
2 fairy
3 celestial being

Examples

传说山上住着一位老仙。

Chuánshuō shānshàng zhù zhe yī wèi lǎo xiān.

Legend says an old immortal lives on the mountain.

她美得像仙女一样。

Tā měi de xiàng xiānnǚ yīyàng.

She is as beautiful as a fairy.

Tips

culture

仙 (immortals) are central to Daoism and Chinese mythology. The 八仙 (Eight Immortals) are among the most famous figures in Chinese folklore.

memory

亻(person) + 山 (mountain) — a person who lives on a mountain, i.e., an immortal hermit.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person (radical form)

Left indexing person-variant 亻 — anchors 仙 as a kind of being. Daoist immortals are not gods from another realm but humans who attained transcendence; the person-radical preserves this human origin. Same family of person-types: 仁, 任, 仇, 仔, 你.

semantic

山 shān

mountain

Right component 山 (mountain) — pure semantic, picturing the home of the immortal. Daoist xian retreated to remote mountain peaks (Wudang, Hua, Kunlun) to cultivate longevity. The whole character literally reads mountain person — one of the most transparent compound ideographs in the dictionary.