xìn
noun HSK 2 #449

Measure Word

fēng

Meanings

  1. 1 letter
  2. 2 to believe
  3. 3 to trust

Characters

Contains (person) + (speech) — a person's word is trustworthy.

Examples

Wǒ shōudào le yì fēng xìn.
I received a letter.
Nǐ xiāngxìn tā ma?
Do you believe him?
Wǒ xìn nǐ shuō de huà.
I believe what you said.

Tips

usage
as a noun means 'letter'. As a verb, it means 'to believe/trust'. 相信 is the full verb form.

Components

radical
rén
person (radical form)
Left person radical — side-form of , indexing radical for . Two strokes depicting a standing figure. Marks as a person-action character. Same person-radical family as , , , , — chars where the action or state belongs to a human.
semantic
yán
speech; word
Right — speech radical with mouth at the bottom and tongue/sound waves above. The compound is a perfect ideograph: a person standing by their words is trustworthy. From 'a person whose word is good' came every modern sense — trust, belief, a letter (a written word), a signal (a transmitted word). Pure semantic compound, no phonetic role.

Stroke Order

xìn