绿 (lǜ): green

Meanings

1 green

Characters

绿

lǜ

green

Contains 纟 (silk radical) — green-dyed silk.

Examples

春天来了，树叶变绿了。

Chūntiān lái le, shùyè biàn lǜ le.

Spring has come and the leaves have turned green.

绿灯亮了，可以走了。

Lǜdēng liàng le, kěyǐ zǒu le.

The green light is on, we can go.

Tips

culture

Wearing a green hat (戴绿帽子, dài lǜ màozi) means your partner is cheating on you — never give someone a green hat as a gift in China. This dates back centuries to when certain disgraced men were made to wear green headwear.

usage

The pinyin lǜ uses the ü vowel. On a keyboard, type "lv" for 绿. Many learners confuse the pronunciation with "lu" — the lips should be rounded as if saying "ee" with pursed lips.

register

Almost every modern compound uses lǜ. The reading lù survives in a small set of proper-noun and classical contexts — most famously 鸭绿江 (Yālùjiāng, the Yalu River on the China-Korea border) and 绿林 (lùlín, greenwood — the bandit-haunt forest).

Components

radical

纟 sī

silk thread (left-side form of 糸)

Silk radical on the left — the indexing semantic. 绿 originally named the green dye obtained from a specific plant, used to colour silk. The radical anchors the color in its dyed-cloth origin. Joins the color-on-silk family: 红 (red), 紫 (purple), 绛 (deep red), 绯 (crimson), where each color name once referred to a specific silk dye.

phonetic

录 lù

record; copy (here phonetic)

Right component supplies the sound: lù → lǜ, just a tone/rounding shift. The original phonetic was 彔 'water dripping from a pulley'; the simplified 录 keeps the same sound. As a phonetic it also drives 碌 lù (busy / pebble) and 禄 lù (official salary) — a tight lu/lǜ family sharing the same right-side shape.