旋 (xuàn): to whirl; to spin violently

Meanings

1 to whirl; to spin violently
2 to turn on a lathe
3 at once; on the spot

Characters

旋

xuàn

to whirl; to spin violently

Examples

突然刮起一阵旋风，把地上的落叶卷了起来。

Tūrán guā qǐ yīzhèn xuànfēng, bǎ dìshang de luòyè juǎn le qǐlai.

Suddenly a whirlwind picked up the fallen leaves on the ground.

工人正在用车床旋零件。

Gōngrén zhèngzài yòng chē chuáng xuàn língjiàn.

The worker is turning the part on a lathe.

Tips

usage

xuàn marks a tight, forceful spin rather than a gentle circling. The most common word is 旋风 (whirlwind, tornado). It also covers shaping metal or wood on a lathe and an older adverb sense 'at once, on the spot'. For ordinary rotating, melody and spiraling, use the xuán reading.

Components

radical

方 fāng

banner-pole residue (here radical)

Left 方 here is not 'direction' but the residue of a banner waving on its pole, the same element seen in 旗, 族 and 旅. The flag is the indexing element; it sets up the scene of soldiers wheeling around a battle standard that gave 旋 its 'revolve, turn back' sense.

semantic

疋 pǐ

foot (fused with the banner tail)

The right side is a seven-stroke fusion: the top two strokes are the trailing edge of the banner (the cloth seen atop 旗), the bottom five are 疋, a foot. Standalone 疋 has five strokes; here it absorbs the two flag-tail strokes above. The image is feet stepping around a banner — circling the standard, the source of 'rotate, return.'