锦 (jǐn): brocade

Meanings

1 brocade
2 embroidered or woven silk fabric
3 splendid / brilliant (figurative)

Characters

锦

jǐn

brocade / ornate woven silk

Examples

这件旗袍用的是上等锦缎。

Zhè jiàn qípáo yòng de shì shàngděng jǐnduàn.

This qipao is made from fine brocade.

锦上添花，雪中送炭，哪个更难？

Jǐnshàngtiānhuā, xuězhōngsòngtàn, nǎge gèng nán?

Which is harder — adding flowers to brocade, or sending charcoal in the snow?

Tips

culture

锦 appears in many classical idioms: 锦上添花 (add flowers to brocade — to make something already good even better), 衣锦还乡 (return home in silken robes — to return in glory). It symbolizes beauty, wealth, and excellence in classical Chinese.

Components

radical

钅 jīn

metal (radical form of 金)

Left metal radical — the indexing radical in its 5-stroke side form. Carries the meaning of value and brightness: 锦 is silk so finely woven and dyed it shines like burnished metal. The radical anchors 锦 in the precious-substance family alongside 银, 铜, 钢; here it specifically connotes the gold-thread brocade of imperial robes.

semantic

帛 bó

silk; silken cloth

Right side 帛 — white silk on a frame, the prototypical undyed luxury cloth. Combined with 钅 metal, the picture is silk shot through with metallic gold thread — the definition of 锦, court-grade brocade. Phonetic value is heavy drift (bó → jǐn), so this works more as a compound ideograph than a phono-semantic pair.