像 (xiàng): to resemble

Meanings

1 to resemble
2 to be like
3 such as

Characters

像

xiàng

resemble; image; like

Contains 亻 (person radical) + 象 (elephant) - a person's image/likeness.

Examples

HSK 2

她长得像妈妈。

Tā zhǎng de xiàng māma.

She looks like her mom.

HSK 2

今天像夏天一样热。

Jīntiān xiàng xiàtiān yíyàng rè.

Today is as hot as summer.

HSK 2

他像个孩子一样开心。

Tā xiàng gè háizi yíyàng kāixīn.

He's as happy as a child.

Tips

grammar

像……一样 is a key comparison pattern: A 像 B 一样 + adjective = A is as [adj] as B.

mistakes

Don't confuse 像 (to resemble) with 象 (elephant) or 向 (toward). They sound alike but mean different things.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person

Person radical on the left signals the human angle: a likeness of someone, a portrait, a statue. The same radical adds the human sense to 仙 immortal, 偶 idol, 佛 Buddha. Without it you have 象 elephant; adding the person turns the elephant-image into 'a representation, a resemblance.'

phonetic

象 xiàng

elephant; image

Right side is 象 'elephant', a direct pictograph of trunk and tusks. It supplies the sound xiàng exactly. Pre-reform Chinese already used 象 itself for 'image, likeness'; the person radical was added to 像 to disambiguate 'a human likeness' from the literal animal - a textbook semantic split.