啖

dàn
verb

Meanings

  1. 1 to eat
  2. 2 to taste
  3. 3 to entice (with bait or profit)

Examples

HSK 7-9
Rì dàn lìzhī sānbǎi kē, bùcí cháng zuò Lǐngnán rén.
Eating three hundred lychees a day, I'd gladly stay a southerner forever.
HSK 7-9
Tā dàn zhī yǐ sīlì.
He lured the man over with the offer of private gain.

Tips

history
啖 is a literary verb 'to eat', often biting into something solid. It is famous from 苏轼's lychee poem. By extension it means to lure someone with bait or profit - to 'feed' them an incentive - as in 啖以私利 ('entice with private gain').

Components

radical
口 kǒu
mouth
The mouth radical on the left. Eating is done with the mouth, so 口 gives the meaning - it groups 啖 with eating and speaking words like 吃 (to eat) and 喝 (to drink).
phonetic
炎 yán
flame (phonetic)
Two fires stacked, standalone 炎 meaning blaze. Here it works only as the sound element; the reading has shifted away from yán to dàn, with no fire meaning carried into 啖.

Stroke Order

啖 dàn