kūn
noun #12,083

Meanings

  1. 1 descendant; offspring
  2. 2 elder brother
  3. 3 used in place names (e.g. Kunlun, Kunming)

Examples

Kūnmíng shì Yúnnánshěng de shěng huì.
Kunming is the capital of Yunnan Province.
Kūnchóng zhǒnglèi fēicháng fēngfù.
There are very many species of insects.

Tips

usage
is rarely used alone in modern Chinese. It mainly appears in compounds like 昆虫 (insect), 昆明 (Kunming), and 昆仑 (Kunlun Mountains).

Components

radical
sun; day
Top sun radical — a pictograph of the sun, square in the small-seal style. In it carries the meaning of light and many — under one sun the whole crowd is gathered. Indexes in the same family as sparkling, prosperous, in the past.
semantic
to compare; two people side by side
Bottom — two people standing side by side, mirroring each other. Combined with the sun above, the picture is a crowd lined up under the same sky, which gave its core sense of 'multitude, together, elder of paired siblings.' Also yields 昆虫 the swarming family of insects.

Stroke Order

kūn