妍

yán
adjective #14,802

Meanings

  1. 1 beautiful
  2. 2 gorgeous

Examples

HSK 3
Yán shì yī gè hěn shòu huānyíng de nǚhái míngzi.
Yan is a very popular name for girls.
HSK 5
Chūntiān bǎihuā zhēng yán.
In spring, hundreds of flowers compete in beauty.

Tips

usage
妍 is literary and rarely used alone in modern speech. It appears in set phrases like 百花争妍 (flowers competing in beauty) and 妍媸 (beautiful and ugly). Very popular as a character in girls' names.
memory
The character combines 女 (woman) and 开 (open/bloom) - a woman in full bloom, radiantly beautiful.

Components

radical
女 nǚ
woman; female
Left woman radical - pictograph of a person kneeling with arms folded, a classical pose. The indexing radical: 妍 means beautiful, gorgeous, gracefulness, almost exclusively of women in classical use (妍蚩 'beauty vs ugliness'). Same family of feminine-aesthetic words: 娇 charming, 婷 graceful, 媚 alluring.
phonetic
开 kāi
to open
Right 开 supplies the sound - historically the phonetic was 幵 (two 干 stacked side by side), which through palatalisation gives yán. Modern 开 is the post-reform shape of that 幵. Pure phonetic role; 开's 'open' meaning doesn't contribute, though 'opening flower' is an easy folk-mnemonic for beauty.

Stroke Order

妍 yán