lán
noun HSK 7-9 #8,522

Meanings

  1. 1 fence
  2. 2 railing
  3. 3 column (text)

Examples

Lángān
railing; banister
Zhuānlán
special column (in newspaper)

Tips

memory
(wood) + (orchid) — a decorative wooden fence

Components

radical
tree; wood
Left tree radical — the indexing radical, a pictograph of a tree with horizontal branches. Anchors in the wood/construction family: bridge, plank, pillar, cabinet. Marks as a wooden structure — railings, fences, animal pens, and (by extension) the columns and 'fields' in newspapers and forms.
phonetic
lán
orchid (here phonetic)
Right supplies the sound — lán exactly. Pure phonetic loan; the 'orchid' meaning contributes nothing semantically. Same phonetic family: to block, rotten, to obstruct. Simplified from traditional , whose right side was the much busier (gate + ). The PRC reform reused (itself simplified from ) as a cleaner phonetic across this whole series.

Stroke Order

lán