lán
adjective

Meanings

  1. 1 greedy; avaricious

Examples

Tā tānlán de dīng zhe huángjīn.
He gazed at the gold with greedy eyes.
Tānlán zhǐ huì gěi nǐ dàilái máfan.
Greed will only bring you trouble.

Tips

usage
Bound character: it lives in 贪婪 (greedy, rapacious). An old gloss split the pair as 'loving money is , loving food is ', though today the word is just one idea: insatiable greed.

Components

radical
woman; female
Bottom woman radical is the indexing radical. The link is structural rather than meaning-based — many trait words were historically filed under ; greed itself has no gender.
phonetic
lín
forest; woods
Top supplies the sound (lín shifting to lán). Two trees side by side; here it works as the phonetic of .

Stroke Order

lán