guàn
noun

Meanings

  1. 1 a kind of heron or stork (archaic)

Examples

Dàotián lǐ zhàn zhe yì zhī guàn.
A stork is standing in the rice paddy.

Tips

history
is an archaic bird name not used independently in modern Chinese. It survives as the phonetic in (to irrigate), (stork), (jar / can), (to observe), and (joyful).
register
Literary and archaic. One older tradition also reads as 'steps / steep slope'; the bird sense is the one that explains its phonetic family.

Components

radical
zhuī
short-tailed bird
The 'short-tailed bird' element is the indexing radical and supplies the core meaning of as a bird name.
semantic
cǎo
grass; plumes
The top stands for the bird's twin head plumes rather than grass. It caps the picture of the heron.
semantic
xuān
two mouths; round eyes
The paired squares depict the bird's large round eyes set above the body element below.

Stroke Order

guàn