长 (cháng): long

Meanings

1 long
2 length

Characters

长

cháng

long; length; grow

Examples

这条路很长。

Zhè tiáo lù hěn cháng.

This road is very long.

她的头发很长。

Tā de tóufa hěn cháng.

Her hair is very long.

长城有多长？

Chángchéng yǒu duō cháng?

How long is the Great Wall?

Tips

mistakes

长 has two pronunciations: cháng (long) and zhǎng (to grow; chief/leader). Context determines which one.

culture

长城 (Chángchéng, the Great Wall) literally means 'long wall'. It stretches over 20,000 km.

Components

ideograph

长 cháng

long; grow; chief

Simplified from traditional 長 (8 strokes) in the 1956 reform — 長 was a pictograph of an elder with long flowing hair leaning on a walking stick, the silhouette of age and length. The modern 4-stroke 长 is a stylised cursive contraction that preserves only the silhouette of the flowing hair; not analysable into independent components today. Two readings: cháng 'long' (the original meaning) and zhǎng 'to grow / chief' (the developed meaning of one who has grown old).

Radical

Long Kangxi #168

The 'long/grow' radical. Originally a pictograph of a long-haired figure — long hair signaling age, then 'elder', then 'long' generally. Simplified from 8-stroke 長 to 4-stroke 长. Indexes very few characters (套 'set/cover' is filed here in some schemes). Important mostly as a high-frequency free morpheme covering both spatial 'long' and verbal 'grow up'.