同 (tòng) · alley; lane

Meanings

1 alley; lane

Characters

同

tòng

alley; lane

Examples

HSK 5

很多老北京人住在胡同里。

Hěn duō lǎo Běijīngrén zhù zài hútòng lǐ.

Many old Beijingers live in the hutongs.

HSK 6

我们拐进去，走进了死胡同。

Wǒmen guǎi jìnqù, zǒu jìn le sǐhútòng.

We turned in and hit a dead end.

Tips

history

胡同 is widely believed to be a borrowing from Mongolian during the Yuan dynasty, when Beijing was the imperial capital Dadu. The Mongolian word for a residential alley around a water-well (hottog) was transcribed into Chinese, and the tone shift of 同 preserved the foreign reading. The character was given its own traditional variant 衕 to mark the alley sense.

usage

Use tòng strictly inside 胡同 and its compounds: 死胡同 (dead-end alley, also figurative impasse), 胡同儿 (the Beijing erhua form). Every other use of the character - 同学, 同时, 合同 - stays on the rising-tone tóng.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Inner mouth radical (Kangxi #30) - the indexing radical, sitting under the framing 冂. Anchors the original 'shared meal under one roof' imagery: people eating together = sameness, identity, alignment. 同 forms many bound compounds: 同学 (classmate), 同事 (colleague), 相同 (identical), 同意 (agree).

semantic

冂 jiōng

down-open frame; far border

Outer down-open frame - standalone 冂 is 2 strokes; in 同 it gains an extra inside horizontal, framing the mouth radical inside. Originally depicted a roof under which people gathered to share food (口) - an enclosure of common purpose. The whole char is indexed under Kangxi #30 口 (mouth) inside.