嘭 (pēng): bang (onomatopoeia)

Meanings

1 bang (onomatopoeia)
2 boom
3 thud

Characters

嘭

pēng

bang (onomatopoeia)

Examples

嘭的一声，门被踢开了。

Pēng de yī shēng, mén bèi tī kāi le.

Bang! The door was kicked open.

气球嘭的一声爆了。

Qìqiú pēng de yī shēng bào le.

The balloon burst with a bang.

Tips

grammar

Onomatopoeia in Chinese often appear in the pattern X的一声 (X de yī shēng), meaning 'with a [sound].' Example: 嘭的一声 = with a bang.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Left mouth radical — the indexing radical, a pictograph of the open mouth. Files 嘭 in the family of sound-emission characters: 啪 slap-sound, 哗 splash, 嗡 buzz, 砰 (also 'bang' with stone radical). Marks 嘭 as an onomatopoeia — the booming or thudding sound a heavy object makes when it strikes.

phonetic

彭 péng

thumping; sound of drumming (surname Peng)

Right 彭 supplies both sound and meaning — péng retoned to pēng, and the original sense of 彭 was the booming sound of a drum (a 壴 drum-on-stand + three 彡 sound-rays). One of the rare cases where the phonetic already encodes the very sound the new character names. Same phonetic family: 澎 surge, 膨 swell, 蓬 luxuriant.