yùn
verb #11,352

Meanings

  1. 1 to iron (clothes)
  2. 2 to press

Examples

Nǐ néng bāng wǒ yùn yīxià zhè jiàn chènshān ma?
Can you help me iron this shirt?
Tā měitiān zǎoshang dōu yào yùn yīfu.
She irons clothes every morning.

Tips

mistakes
has two pronunciations: yùn (to iron clothes) and yù (smooth, reconciled - literary). The common word 熨斗 (yùndǒu, clothes iron) uses the yùn pronunciation.

Components

radical
huǒ
fire
The fire radical sits at the bottom — flames pictured rising. It anchors the meaning of heat: an iron is hot metal pressed onto fabric. The radical indexes with all heat-application chars: burn, boil, roast, lamp, smoke.
phonetic
wèi
to soothe; officer (here phonetic)
supplies the sound — wèi drifting to yùn, an irregular shift. It also adds a perfect semantic note: originally meant to press down with a hot hand, pacifying skin or soothing an ache — exactly what an iron does to wrinkled cloth. Same phonetic in console.

Stroke Order

yùn