炽 (chì): blazing

Meanings

1 blazing
2 flaming
3 ardent
4 splendid
5 illustrious

Characters

炽

chì

blazing; ardent

Examples

炉火炽热,把整间屋子都烤暖了。

Lúhuǒ chìrè, bǎ zhěng jiān wūzi dōu kǎo nuǎn le.

The stove fire was blazing hot, warming the whole room.

他对科学的热情依然炽烈。

Tā duì kēxué de rèqíng yīrán chì liè.

His passion for science is as fierce as ever.

Tips

usage

炽 is mostly literary; in modern use it appears in compounds like 炽热 (chìrè, 'red-hot'), 炽烈 (chìliè, 'blazing'), 白炽灯 (báichìdēng, 'incandescent lamp'). On its own it's poetic.

memory

The 火 (fire) radical on the left tells you everything: 炽 means fire so intense it's almost showy — 'splendid' and 'illustrious' come from that same blaze metaphor.

Components

radical

火 huǒ

fire

Left-side fire radical — pictograph of flames rising in three tongues (the simplified standalone 火, distinct from the four-dot bottom-fire 灬). The indexing radical, naturally so: 炽 means blazing-hot, fiercely burning (炽热 white-hot, 炽烈 fierce-intense). Used figuratively for any intense passion or activity. Same fire-family: 焰 flame, 烧 to burn, 烫 scalding, 燃 to ignite, 灼 to scorch.

phonetic

只 zhǐ

only; single (simplified from 戠)

Right side is graphically 只 in modern simplified form, a substitute for the traditional 戠 (zhī) that 熾 originally carried. Supplies the sound: zhī → chì with regular zh/ch alternation. 只 was chosen for acoustic proximity. Don't read meaning from 只 'only' here — it's a stand-in glyph; traditional 熾 keeps the transparent 戠.