liàng / liáng
verb #4,513

Meanings

  1. 1 to let (something) cool down; to set out so it cools

Examples

Bǎ tāng liàng yīhuìr zài hē.
Let the soup cool a bit before drinking it.
Wǒ bǎ kāishuǐ dàojìn bēizi lǐ liàng zhe.
I poured the boiling water into a cup and set it aside to cool.

Tips

usage
The liàng reading is the causative twin of liáng: not 'X is cool', but 'let X become cool.' Always used as a transitive verb with a construction or with a direct object — 一会儿 (let it cool for a while), 桌上 (let it cool on the table). Don't mix the readings: 'this water is cool' is liáng, 'let this water cool' is liàng.
mistakes
Cooks often write (the sun radical, 'air-dry') instead of in this sense — both are homophones with related meanings. Strictly, the food-cooling word is (ice radical, temperature-cooling); is for sun-drying laundry. In practice many native writers swap them.

Components

radical
bīng
ice (left-side radical)
Same ice radical as in the liáng reading — the cold-element anchor. The shift to fourth tone marks the causative verb sense: making something else become cool.
phonetic
jīng
capital; tall building (phonetic)
Same phonetic as in liáng. Note that within the phonetic family, fourth tone is the more common modern reflex (, ), so the liàng reading aligns with the wider phonetic group.

Stroke Order

liàng