yīn
verb

Meanings

  1. 1 (classical) mute; unable to speak
  2. 2 (classical) silent; not making a sound

Examples

万马
Wànmǎ qí yīn jiū kě āi.
Ten thousand horses standing mute is, after all, a thing to grieve.

Tips

history
is not used independently in modern Chinese. It survives in the idiom 万马 (a deathly, oppressive silence, literally 'ten thousand horses all mute'). The phonetic is .
register
Archaic and literary only, alive mainly inside that one idiom, not in everyday speech.

Components

radical
kǒu
mouth
The mouth radical fits the meaning: being is a failure of the mouth to make sound, being mute.
phonetic
yīn
sound; tone
supplies the sound yīn and adds an ironic touch: the 'sound' element sits inside the word for having no voice.

Stroke Order

yīn