泰 (tài): peaceful

Meanings

1 peaceful
2 safe
3 grand
4 Thai (short for Thailand)

Characters

泰

tài

peaceful; grand; Thai

Examples

国泰民安。

Guótàimín'ān.

The country is prosperous and the people are at peace.

他去泰国旅游了。

Tā qù Tàiguó lǚyóu le.

He went traveling in Thailand.

Tips

culture

泰 carries connotations of greatness and peace. Mount Tai (泰山) is the most sacred of China's Five Great Mountains, symbolizing stability — hence the idiom 稳如泰山 'steady as Mount Tai.'

Components

radical

氺 shuǐ

water (radical form)

Bottom water radical 氺 (Kangxi #85, the water-foot form when 水 sits at the base) — the indexing radical. Anchors 泰 in the water family alongside 求, 录 and other chars sharing this five-stroke flowing silhouette. Also gives the line into modern usage like 泰国 (Thailand).

phonetic

大 dà

big; great

Top fused unit — historically 大 (great, supplying the sound dà → tài) merged with 廾 (two hands raised) into a single dam-shape silhouette. Standalone 大 has only 3 strokes (一+丿+乀); in 泰 it absorbed the 廾 hands to become 5 strokes. The original etymology was 'great-hands washing-water' — a person being rinsed by hands sluicing water, hence 'unimpeded, free, peaceful, grand.' Same phonetic family produced 太, 汰.