焉

yān

particle #19,737

Meanings

1 where (literary interrogative)
2 how (literary interrogative)
3 therein; thereupon (literary sentence-final particle)
4 used in names

Characters

焉

yān

where; how; therein (classical particle)

Examples

心不在焉，做什么都出错。

Xīnbùzàiyān, zuò shénme dōu chūcuò.

When one's heart is not in it, everything goes wrong.

皮之不存，毛将焉附？

Pí zhī bù cún, máo jiāng yān fù?

If the skin is gone, where will the hair attach? (If the foundation is lost, what will sustain the rest?)

Tips

grammar

焉 is a Classical Chinese particle with multiple functions: interrogative ('where/how'), sentence-final filler similar to 于此 ('therein'), or an emphatic marker. It survives mainly in idioms like 心不在焉 (absent-minded) and classical quotations.

Components

radical

灬 huǒ

fire (bottom radical form)

Bottom four-dot fire radical, the indexing radical here. In 焉 it is not fire-as-flame but the stylised drawing of the bird's tail-feathers, reanalysed graphically as the dot radical. The original yellow-bird meaning faded long ago; 焉 today survives as a classical Chinese grammatical particle meaning 'how, where, herein, thereupon.'

pictograph

焉 yān

a yellow bird (top portion, fused pictograph)

Top and middle of 焉 fuse into a single bird-pictograph: head, neck, body and folded wing drawn in seven strokes. Originally 焉 named a yellow bird native to old Jiang-Huai; the modern character compresses that drawing into an irreducible top half that no longer splits cleanly.

Stroke Order