gān
noun

Meanings

  1. 1 licorice plant (classical)
  2. 2 glycoside (chemistry term)

Examples

HSK 5
Hěn duō zhíwù hányǒu gān lèi wùzhì.
Many plants contain glycosides such as the toxic amygdalin.

Tips

history
has no everyday standalone use. Classically it named the licorice plant - a grass radical over sweet, both sound and sense. Modern Chinese keeps it alive only as the chemistry term for a glycoside, as in 糖苷.
register
Classical plant name; modern use restricted to chemistry vocabulary, not general speech.

Components

radical
cǎo
grass; plant
Grass radical on top, the plant-category marker. It places among botanical names - here the licorice plant.
phonetic
gān
sweet
sweet sits below and does double duty: it gives the gān reading and hints at the meaning, since licorice is a sweet root. The same phonetic appears in and .

Stroke Order

gān