yáng
verb HSK 7-9 #7,093

Meanings

  1. 1 to raise
  2. 2 to scatter
  3. 3 to publicize

Examples

Wǒmen yào fāyáng chuántǒng.
We should carry forward tradition.
Yángchángbìduǎn.
Play to your strengths and avoid weaknesses.

Tips

usage
Common in 发扬 (fāyáng, to develop/promote) and 表扬 (biǎoyáng, to praise).

Components

radical
shǒu
hand (left-side form of 手)
Left hand radical — the indexing component. means to raise, scatter, broadcast — all hand actions. Lifting a flag, scattering grain, raising a voice, raising someone's reputation: every sense of traces back to this hand-lifting motion. Same family: (hit), (take), (push), (grab).
phonetic
yáng
rising sun; bright; positive (yang)
Right side is a heavily contracted echo of (the original 9-stroke phonetic, which still survives in the traditional ). The simplification reform reduced those 9 strokes to a 3-stroke wave, keeping the sound (yáng = yáng, no drift) but losing the sun-rising-over-horizon picture. Same simplified phonetic appears in (poplar), (field), (soup), (scald).

Stroke Order

yáng