huàn
adjective #29,426

Meanings

  1. 1 shining
  2. 2 glowing
  3. 3 lustrous
  4. 4 brilliant (of light or appearance)

Examples

Tā jīngshénhuànfā de zǒujìn le huìyìshì.
He walked into the conference room looking radiant and full of energy.
Gǔchéng jīngguò xiūshàn hòu huànrányīxīn.
The ancient city looked completely new after renovation.

Tips

usage
is a bound morpheme — it almost never appears alone in modern Chinese. It appears in set phrases like 焕发 (to glow/radiate), 焕然一新 (completely renewed), and 容光焕发 (glowing with health).

Components

radical
huǒ
fire
Left-side fire radical — a pictograph of flames licking upward. Indexes in the light and heat family alongside to burn, fierce, lamp. Carries the meaning: brilliance, the bright dancing glow of fire, which extends figuratively to anything dazzling or radiant.
phonetic
huàn
abundant; resplendent (here phonetic + semantic)
Right side supplies the sound directly — huàn to huàn, identical. also adds meaning: it classically describes things resplendent, abundantly bright, often used of grand buildings. So stacks fire onto splendour, giving the picture of brilliant blazing radiance — the resplendence of light itself.

Stroke Order

huàn