zhāng
adjective #20,441

Meanings

  1. 1 bright
  2. 2 clear
  3. 3 manifest
  4. 4 to make evident
  5. 5 to distinguish

Examples

Tā de gōngjì xiǎn ér zhāng, zhòngrén yǒumùgòngdǔ.
His achievements are bright and clear for all to see.
Biǎozhāng xiānjìn, jīlì hòu jìn.
Commend those who lead the way; inspire those who lag behind.

Tips

register
is a classical/literary character rarely used alone in modern Chinese. It most commonly appears in compound words: 表彰 (biǎozhāng, to commend), 彰显 (zhāngxiǎn, to make manifest), and (clearly evident, idiom).

Components

radical
shān
feathers; bristles; visible pattern
Right indexing radical — three slanted strokes drawn as glossy hairs or sweeping brush marks, the classical symbol of surface decoration and visible texture. It puts in the family of "outward-display" characters alongside shadow, shape, colourful, elegance.
phonetic
zhāng
chapter; mark; emblem
Left supplies the sound zhāng with no tone shift, and a strong semantic echo: already means an emblem or written mark — something publicly displayed. Pair that with the brush-strokes on the right and you get "displayed visibly, made manifest" — the core sense of .

Stroke Order

zhāng