xiàn
noun HSK 7-9 #17,313

Meanings

  1. 1 gland

Examples

Jiǎzhuàngxiàn shì réntǐ zhòngyào de nèifēnmì xiàn.
The thyroid is an important endocrine gland in the human body.
Tā de línbā xiàn zhǒng le.
His lymph glands are swollen.

Tips

usage
rarely appears alone — it's almost always part of a compound: 甲状腺 (thyroid), 前列腺 (prostate), 淋巴 (lymph gland), (sweat gland), 唾液 (salivary gland).

Components

radical
ròu
flesh; body (radical form of 肉)
Meat-flesh radical on the left — side-form of used for anatomy characters ( face, chest, organ, liver, muscle). Visually identical to the moon radical but semantically distinct. Marks as a body part: a gland is a piece of secretory tissue, classified flesh.
phonetic
quán
spring; source of water (here phonetic + semantic)
Right supplies sound and meaning. Sound: quán drifts to xiàn via an old palatal shift. Meaning: originally pictures water bubbling from rock, a 'flowing source.' The combination is brilliantly precise — a gland is a 'fleshy spring,' an organ that secretes a flow inside the body. was coined in the 19th century to translate Western 'gland.'

Stroke Order

xiàn