náng
noun #8,693

Meanings

  1. 1 bag; sack; pouch
  2. 2 pocket; purse (literary)

Examples

Tā nángzhōng xiūsè, mǎibùqǐ zhège.
His pockets are empty — he can't afford this.
Zhōngguó duì nángkuò le suǒyǒu jīnpái.
The Chinese team swept all the gold medals.
Tā bǎ suǒyǒu dōngxi dōu zhuāng jìnxíng náng lǐ.
He packed everything into his travel bag.

Tips

usage
is literary and appears mostly in set phrases: 囊括 (to encompass/sweep), 囊中羞涩 (short of money, lit. 'embarrassed inside one's purse'), 行囊 (travel bag), (brocade bag — a clever strategy).

Components

radical
kǒu
mouth; sack opening
Top cluster centred on the small — the indexing radical, depicting the cinched mouth of a sack tied off with a lid stroke above and a horizontal binding below. Historical components have fused into this 5-stroke knot; treat it as one bag-mouth unit rather than splitting surrounding strokes.
phonetic
xiāng
to lift; to aid (phonetic)
Bottom supplies the sound — xiāng shifting to náng through nasal alternation. itself originally pictured someone hoisting and bundling cloth, so as phonetic here it doubles as a faint semantic hint: a heavy sack lifted up. The fullest stroke-block in the character, carrying most of the visual weight.

Stroke Order

náng