xiàn
noun HSK 4 #6,036

Meanings

  1. 1 county

Examples

Tā láizì yīgè xiǎo xiànchéng.
He comes from a small county town.
Zhège xiàn yǒu wǔshí wàn rénkǒu.
This county has a population of 500,000.

Tips

culture
In China's administrative divisions: (province) > (city/prefecture) > (county) > / (township). 县城 means 'county seat/town', often seen as small-town China.

Components

radical
private (graphic only)
Bottom — historically a small loop, here serving as the tail of the simplified shape. The indexing radical (Kangxi #28). Originally meant 'private, self-enclosing,' though here its role is positional, not meaningful. Family: (go), (public), (join).
semantic
qiě
moreover (graphic only)
Top looks like but is a graphic substitute. The traditional had an inverted head over (rope) — a severed head hung by a cord, originally meaning 'to suspend.' From territories administered as 'hanging from' the central state came the modern sense 'county.'

Stroke Order

xiàn