noun #9,552

Measure Word

Meanings

  1. 1 chestnut (tree or nut)
  2. 2 to tremble; to shudder (literary)

Examples

Qiūtiān jiēshàng dàochù dōu shì mài tángchǎolìzi de.
In autumn, sugar-roasted chestnut vendors are everywhere on the streets.
Zhè kē lì shù yǐjīng yǒu yībǎi nián le.
This chestnut tree is already a hundred years old.
Wǒ zuì xǐhuan chī bǎnlì.
I love eating chestnuts.

Tips

usage
alone is literary. In everyday speech, use 栗子 (lìzi) for chestnuts. Common compounds: 板栗 (Chinese chestnut), 糖炒栗子 (sugar-roasted chestnuts), 栗色 (maroon/chestnut color).
memory
The character has (wood) at the bottom — it's a tree. The top part 西 (west) is a phonetic component. Don't confuse with (sù, millet) which has (rice) instead.

Components

radical
tree; wood
Bottom tree radical — pictograph of a tree with branches above and roots below. The indexing radical here, supplying the basic meaning: names both the chestnut tree and its fruit. Combined with the spiny husk above, the picture is a tree bearing prickly-shelled nuts — the literary 'tremble' sense developed from the shivering image of the bristled husk.
semantic
covering top (drawn as a husked nut)
Top — visually the flat-bottomed cover form (variant of 西), but in this is a stylization of the original picture: a chestnut burr bristling with spines, the prickly husk around the nut. The shape gives its distinguishing image, separating it from plain ticket which looks similar above the line.

Stroke Order