cháng
noun

Meanings

  1. 1 (archaic) a plant named in the Book of Songs, tentatively the carambola (star fruit)
  2. 2 (archaic) a surname

Examples

Shījīng lǐ tídào de cháng chǔ shì shénme zhíwù zhìjīn nányǐ quèdìng.
The Book of Songs mentions a plant called cháng-chǔ, whose modern identity is uncertain.

Tips

history
Not used alone in modern Chinese. It survives mainly in the classical plant name from the Book of Songs and as a rare surname, most famously the Zhou-dynasty figure , whose blood was said to turn to jade.
register
Literary and onomastic only — seen in classical poetry and old names, not in everyday speech.

Components

radical
cǎo
grass; plant
The grass radical marks this as a plant word, fitting its only real sense — a plant named in the Book of Songs.
phonetic
cháng
long
The bottom supplies the sound cháng with no tone shift, a clean phonetic with no meaning contribution here.

Stroke Order

cháng