冷 (lěng): cold

Meanings

1 cold

Characters

冷

lěng

cold

冫 (ice) + 令 (to order) — cold as ice.

Examples

今天很冷。

Jīntiān hěn lěng.

It's cold today.

你冷不冷？

Nǐ lěng bù lěng?

Are you cold?

水太冷了。

Shuǐ tài lěng le.

The water is too cold.

Tips

usage

冷笑话 ('cold joke') is the Chinese term for a dad joke or a joke so bad it gives you chills instead of laughs.

mistakes

冷 is for temperature and atmosphere. For personality ('cold person'), Chinese also uses 冷, but 冷淡 (cold and indifferent) is more precise.

Components

radical

冫 bīng

ice (two-drop radical)

Left-side ice radical 冫 — two drops representing frozen water (distinct from the three-drop water radical 氵). Files cold-related characters: 冰 (ice), 凉 (cool), 冬 (winter), 冻 (freeze), 凛 (bitter cold). Provides all the meaning here while the right side just supplies sound.

phonetic

令 lìng

order; command

Right side 令 supplies the sound (lìng → lěng, a finals shift). 令 itself pictures a kneeling person receiving an order under a roof. No semantic contribution — purely phonetic. Same phonetic in 领 (neck/lead), 龄 (age), 铃 (bell), 邻 (neighbour).