夕

xī
noun #12,041

Meanings

  1. 1 sunset; evening; dusk
  2. 2 eve (as in New Year's Eve)

Examples

HSK 5
Chúxī yè quánjiā rén yìqǐ chīfàn.
On New Year's Eve, the whole family eats together.
HSK 6
Xīyáng hěn měi.
The sunset is beautiful.

Tips

memory
夕 looks like a crescent moon - the moon appears in the evening.

Components

pictograph
夕 xī
evening; sunset
夕 is a pictograph of a crescent moon just visible in the dusk sky - three strokes preserving the half-moon shape from oracle-bone graphs. It is its own indexing radical and sits next to 月 (full moon). 夕 builds 多 many, 名 name, 梦 dream - all night-flavoured chars.

Radical

Evening Kangxi #36

The 夕 radical, a half-moon pictograph for dusk (Shuowen: 莫也, from 月半见). A small but vivid Kangxi class: 多, 外, 名, 夜, 梦. Soft semantic clue toward time-of-day or dimness, though most modern uses have drifted from the original sunset image.

Used in

View all 8 →
Showing 6 of 8 · default form 夕
多 duō
many · much
够 gòu
enough · sufficient
外 wài
outside · foreign
夜 yè
night
夥 huǒ
variant of 伙 · many; much
夙 sù
early in the morning · long-held; long-cherished

Stroke Order

夕 xī