dòng
noun #69,057

Meanings

  1. 1 a cave; a mine pit or gallery (dialectal, same as 洞)
  2. 2 a stone grinding mill (classical)

Examples

Kuànggōng zài shí dòng lǐ xiàng shēn chù kāi cǎi.
The miners dug deep into the rock pit.

Tips

history
has little standalone use in standard Chinese. As a variant of it means a cave or mine gallery (common in mining and southwestern place names); read it is an old word for a stone grinding mill. The stone radical marks the rock sense; supplies the sound.
register
Dialectal and archaic. In standard Mandarin write for a cave; stays in mining usage and regional place names.

Components

radical
shí
stone; rock
(stone) is the indexing radical on the left, marking as something cut into rock: a cave, a mine pit, or a stone mill.
phonetic
tóng
phonetic element
supplies the sound for , the same phonetic that gives its reading; the tone has shifted from level to falling.

Stroke Order

dòng