佯 (yáng) · to feign; to pretend; to simulate

Meanings

1 to feign; to pretend; to simulate

Characters

佯

yáng

to feign; to pretend

Examples

HSK 5

他佯装受伤，骗过了对手。

Tā yángzhuāng shòushāng, piàn guò le duìshǒu.

He feigned injury and fooled his opponent.

HSK 6

将军佯退，引敌深入。

Jiāngjūn yáng tuì, yǐn dí shēnrù.

The general feigned a retreat to lure the enemy deep in.

Tips

register

佯 is a formal/literary word. In everyday spoken Chinese, people use 假装 (to pretend) instead. 佯 appears often in classical texts, historical dramas, and formal writing.

memory

佯 = 亻 (person) + 羊 (sheep). Think of a wolf in sheep's clothing - a person acting like a sheep, pretending to be something they're not.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person (radical form of 人)

Left side-form person radical - the indexing radical. Marks 佯 as a human behaviour: pretending, putting on an act, feigning. Anchors it in the human-verb family with 假 (false), 仿 (imitate), 伪 (counterfeit), 似 (resemble). Pretence is something only people do.

phonetic

羊 yáng

sheep; goat

Right side 羊 supplies the sound directly (yáng to yáng, exact match). Same phonetic anchors 洋 (ocean), 杨 (poplar), 痒 (itch), 养 (raise). The 'sheep' meaning is unused; the connection is purely the sound. The most famous compound is 佯装 (to pretend) and the idiom 佯死 (to play dead).