鸿

hóng
noun #36,768

Meanings

  1. 1 wild swan; bean goose
  2. 2 great; vast; grand

Examples

HSK 7-9
Hóng yàn nán fēi, qiū yì yǐ nóng.
The wild geese fly south - autumn is already deep.
HSK 7-9
Tā lì xià le hóng tú dàzhì.
He set himself a grand vision and lofty ambition.

Tips

culture
鸿 is the wild swan goose, an enduring symbol in classical poetry. Two famous uses: 鸿雁 (hóngyàn, wild geese - bringers of letters from afar) and the Sima Qian line 死有重于泰山或轻于鸿毛 ('a death may weigh more than Mount Tai, or be lighter than a goose feather'), where 鸿毛 stands for the smallest possible weight.
memory
Compounds split cleanly: 'goose' sense → 鸿雁 (wild geese), 鸿毛 (goose down). 'Grand' sense → 鸿图 (grand plan), 鸿运 (great fortune), 鸿儒 (great scholar).

Components

radical
niǎo
bird
Right - pictograph of a bird with crest, wing, and feet, the indexing radical placing 鸿 in the bird family with , , , . Specifically 鸿 names the large wild swan or bean goose; by literary extension it means 'vast, grand' - anything as sweeping as a flock of geese across the sky.
phonetic
jiāng
river; the Yangtze
Left - kept as one unit because it has a standalone reading. Inside the right supplies the sound (gōng → hóng via h/g alternation, same as and ). The water meaning reinforces the picture of wild swans skimming a great river, a classical image for migrating geese in autumn.

Stroke Order

鸿 hóng