léi
noun #1,047

Meanings

  1. 1 thunder
  2. 2 mine (military)

Examples

HSK 3
Kāishǐ dǎléi bìng xià qǐ le dàyǔ.
It started thundering and raining heavily.
HSK 5
雷声孩子们吵醒
Léishēng bǎ háizimen chǎoxǐng le.
The sound of thunder woke up the children.
HSK 6
Zhànchǎng shàng shìbīng yào xiǎoxīn dìléi.
Soldiers must be careful of landmines on the battlefield.

Tips

memory
(rain) + (field) - thunder rolling over the fields

Components

radical
rain
Top rain radical - the indexing component. Pictures clouds with falling raindrops. Marks as a weather phenomenon: thunder rolls during storms, so the rain radical anchors it in the same family as (snow), (fog), (frost), (dew), (lightning, when fuller).
semantic
tián
field; rumbling drum
Bottom - historically a single circle (eventually replicated in oracle bone forms) showing the rolling sound of thunder echoing across the land. Standardized later to the field-square shape. Carries the rumbling-roar meaning, not "rice paddy" - the resemblance to is graphic only.

Stroke Order

léi