gān
noun

Meanings

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

Examples

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