畔 (pàn): side

Meanings

1 side
2 edge
3 bank (of a river, field, etc.)

Characters

畔

pàn

side; edge; boundary (literary)

Examples

他们坐在河畔，看着落日余晖。

Tāmen zuò zài hépàn, kàn zheluò rì yú huī.

They sat by the riverside watching the last glow of the setting sun.

湖畔的树林在秋天变得五彩缤纷。

Húpàn de shùlín zài qiūtiān biàn de wǔcǎibīnfēn.

The forest by the lakeside becomes a riot of colors in autumn.

田畔的小路通向远处的村庄。

Tián pàn de xiǎolù tōngxiàng yuǎnchù de cūnzhuāng.

The path at the edge of the field leads to a village in the distance.

Tips

register

畔 is a literary bound form — it is almost always used attached to a noun (e.g. 河畔 riverside, 湖畔 lakeside, 田畔 field edge). It rarely stands alone in modern spoken Chinese.

Components

radical

田 tián

field; farmland

Left field radical — a top-down picture of a plot divided by paths into four squares. Indexes 畔 in the agriculture family with 畦 garden bed, 界 boundary, 略 outline. The original sense of 畔 is the raised earthen ridge marking off one field from the next.

phonetic

半 bàn

half

Right side 半 gives the sound bàn → pàn with a regular b/p shift. 半 ('half', from splitting an ox down the middle) also adds quiet semantic flavour: a field boundary is the line that halves one plot from its neighbour. Same phonetic in 伴 companion, 拌 to mix, 叛 to rebel.