鬣 (liè): mane (of a horse, lion etc.)

Meanings

1 mane (of a horse, lion etc.)
2 bristles
3 long hair on the neck of an animal

Characters

鬣

liè

mane, bristles

Examples

雄狮的鬣又浓又黑。

Xióngshī de liè yòu nóng yòu hēi.

The male lion's mane is thick and black.

马鬣在风中飞扬。

Mǎ liè zài fēng zhōng fēiyáng.

The horse's mane flies in the wind.

Tips

register

鬣 is rare and literary — you'll see it in classical poetry, zoology terms (鬣狗 liègǒu = hyena, 鬣蜥 lièxī = iguana), and high-register prose. In everyday speech, the more common word for an animal's mane is 鬃 (zōng) or just 毛 (máo).

memory

The character has 髟 (biāo, long hair) on top — the same radical you see in 髮 (hair) and 鬓 (temples). Whenever you spot 髟, expect a hair-related meaning.

Components

radical

髟 biāo

long hair (radical)

Top long-hair radical (Kangxi #190) — 长 (long) over 彡 (streaks), picturing flowing tresses cascading down. It indexes 鬣 in the hair family: 髮 hair, 髯 whiskers, 鬃 horse-mane. 鬣 names the coarse mane along the back of a horse, lion, or wild boar — the radical anchors the meaning as hair.

phonetic

巤 liè

mane; bristles (here phonetic)

Bottom 巤 is itself an ancient graph of an animal head with hair bristling outward, supplying the sound liè directly. Same phonetic powers 蜡 wax, 猎 hunt, 腊 cured-meat. 巤 is the original 'mane' graph; 髟 was added later as a clarifying semantic marker — etymology and picture reinforcing each other.