柠 (níng) · lemon (shortened form of 柠檬), citrus (in compounds)

Meanings

1 lemon (shortened form of 柠檬)
2 citrus (in compounds)

Characters

柠

níng

lemon (short for 柠檬)

Examples

HSK 4

这杯茶里加了一片柠。

Zhè bēi chá lǐjiā le yípiàn níng.

A slice of lemon was added to this cup of tea.

HSK 7-9

她喜欢喝柠水，清爽解渴。

Tā xǐhuan hē níng shuǐ, qīngshuǎng jiěkě.

She likes drinking lemon water; it's refreshing and quenches thirst.

Tips

usage

柠 is a shorthand for 柠檬 (níngméng, lemon), used in casual speech and in the names of lemon-flavored drinks. It rarely appears alone in formal writing, where 柠檬 is preferred.

Components

radical

木 mù

tree; wood

Left-side tree radical - a pictograph of trunk, branches, and roots. Indexes 柠 in the tree-species family alongside 桃 peach, 梨 pear, 橙 orange. Carries the meaning: a lemon tree is a citrus tree, and the radical groups it with all the orchard trees of Chinese horticulture.

phonetic

宁 níng

peaceful (here phonetic)

Right side 宁 supplies the sound directly - níng to níng, identical. The peaceful, tranquil meaning of 宁 doesn't transfer; it's borrowed purely as a sound marker. The simplified 柠 replaces the traditional 檸 with this shorter 宁. 柠檬 lemon is the everyday compound, a 20th-century transliteration of 'lemon' sound-mapped onto two existing chars.