verb #14,228

Meanings

  1. 1 to admire
  2. 2 to yearn for

Examples

HSK 5
Tā yīzhí mùmíng xiǎng qù nà jiā cāntīng.
He has long admired that restaurant's reputation and wanted to go.
HSK 7-9
Hěnduō rén dōu yǎngmù tā de cáihuá.
Many people admire her talent.

Tips

usage
is literary on its own. In modern Chinese it usually appears in compounds: 羡慕 (envy), 仰慕 (look up to), 爱慕 (adore), 慕名 (attracted by fame).

Components

radical
xīn
heart (bottom-form radical)
Bottom heart radical ⺗ - the four-stroke form takes when it sits beneath a character (compare with the 4-dot form). It indexes in the mental-emotional family alongside think, long for, worry. The heart on the bottom marks inward feeling rather than outward act - is the inward yearning of longing.
phonetic
do not; sunset
Top supplies the sound: mò drifting to mù with the regular vowel shift. Same phonetic powers mold, touch, membrane, grave, dusk. itself depicts the sun () sinking into grass (...) - the original graph for 'sunset.' Faintly semantic too: is the longing felt as evening falls, the dusk-pang of missing someone.

Stroke Order