像 (xiàng): to resemble

Meanings

1 to resemble
2 to be like
3 such as

Characters

像

xiàng

resemble; image; like

Contains 亻 (person radical) + 象 (elephant) — a person's image/likeness.

Examples

她长得像妈妈。

Tā zhǎng de xiàng māma.

She looks like her mom.

今天像夏天一样热。

Jīntiān xiàng xiàtiān yíyàng rè.

Today is as hot as summer.

他像个孩子一样开心。

Tā xiàng gè háizi yíyàng kāixīn.

He's as happy as a child.

Tips

grammar

像……一样 is a key comparison pattern: A 像 B 一样 + adjective = A is as [adj] as B.

mistakes

Don't confuse 像 (to resemble) with 象 (elephant) or 向 (toward). They sound alike but mean different things.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person

Person radical on the left signals the human angle: a likeness of someone, a portrait, a statue. The same radical adds the human sense to 仙 immortal, 偶 idol, 佛 Buddha. Without it you have 象 elephant; adding the person turns the elephant-image into 'a representation, a resemblance.'

phonetic

象 xiàng

elephant; image

Right side is 象 'elephant', a direct pictograph of trunk and tusks. It supplies the sound xiàng exactly. Pre-reform Chinese already used 象 itself for 'image, likeness'; the person radical was added to 像 to disambiguate 'a human likeness' from the literal animal — a textbook semantic split.