xiān
verb

Meanings

  1. 1 used in 翩跹, to dance with light, whirling steps (literary)

Examples

Wǔ zhě zài táishàng piān xiān qǐwǔ.
The dancers whirled lightly across the stage.

Tips

history
never stands alone; it occurs only in ('to dance with light whirling steps') and the variant . The foot radical marks the stepping; supplies the sound.
register
Literary. You meet only inside the set word , typically in poetry and elegant prose, not in plain speech.

Components

radical
foot
(foot) is the indexing radical on the left, marking as a way of moving the feet, here the light whirling steps of a dance.
phonetic
xiān
phonetic element
supplies the reading for directly, with matching tone; it is the same phonetic seen in and .

Stroke Order

xiān