缬 (xié): patterned silk made by tie-dyei…

Meanings

1 patterned silk made by tie-dyeing
2 tie-dye; resist-dyeing

Characters

缬

xié

patterned silk made by tie-dyeing

Examples

唐代的扎染丝绸叫缬。

Táng dài de zā rǎn sīchóu jiào xié.

Tang-dynasty tie-dyed silk is called 缬.

这块布有美丽的缬纹。

Zhèkuài bù yǒu měilì de xié wén.

This length of cloth has a beautiful tie-dye pattern.

Tips

culture

An ancient Chinese resist-dyeing technique: the silk is bound or stitched, then dyed, so the tied spots stay un-dyed and form a pattern. Compound forms include 扎缬 (tie-dye) and 夹缬 (clamp-resist dyeing), both flourishing in the Tang dynasty.

Components

radical

纟 sī

silk (left-side radical)

The silk radical 纟, the left-side form of 丝. It marks 缬 as a textile word, putting it in the same family as 绸 silk and 染-related cloth terms.

phonetic

颉 xié

to fly upward (phonetic)

The right side 颉 (itself 吉 over the head element 页) supplies the sound xié almost unchanged. Keeping it as one unit follows the dictionary convention of treating a recognized standalone character as a single phonetic rather than fracturing it further.