瘟 (wēn) · epidemic; pestilence; plague

Meanings

1 epidemic; pestilence; plague
2 (figuratively) dull; lackluster (of a performance)
3 stupid

Characters

瘟

wēn

epidemic, plague; radical 疒 (sickness)

Examples

HSK 5

村里闹了一场瘟。

Cūnlǐ nào le yī chǎng wēn.

An epidemic broke out in the village.

HSK 5

这场戏演得有点瘟。

Zhè chǎng xì yǎn de yǒudiǎn wēn.

This scene was acted a bit listlessly.

HSK 7-9

鸡瘟把整个鸡场都毁了。

Jī wēn bǎ zhěnggè jī chǎng dōu huǐ le.

Bird flu wiped out the whole chicken farm.

Tips

memory

The radical 疒 (sickness frame) signals every disease character in Chinese. Inside 瘟 sits 昷 (warm/steamy), suggesting 'sickness from steamy, miasmic air' - exactly how pre-modern China explained epidemics. So 瘟 = the radical for 'disease' + the idea of 'feverish, contagious heat'.

register

瘟 rarely stands alone in modern speech; it lives inside compounds like 瘟疫 (plague), 鸡瘟 (avian flu), 猪瘟 (swine fever), 瘟神 (plague god - used as 'jinx, troublemaker'), and the insult 瘟生 (loser, dolt).

Components

radical

疒 nè

sickness (radical)

Outer sickness radical - a lean-to roof (广) with two added strokes that picture a person reclining on a sickbed. It indexes 瘟 in the disease family: 病 illness, 疼 pain, 疫 epidemic, 痒 itch, 症 symptom. 瘟 specifically names a deadly contagious epidemic - plague, pestilence - so the radical commits the meaning to the realm of mass illness.

phonetic

昷 wēn

warm; gentle

Inner 昷 supplies the sound directly: wēn. Same phonetic powers 温 warm-water, 蕴 contain, 揾 wipe. 昷 itself depicts 日 (sun) over 皿 (vessel) - sunlight warming food in a bowl. Bitterly ironic semantic flavor too: the warming-vessel image gives way, in 瘟, to the unwanted heat of a feverish illness spreading through a community.