懒 (lǎn): lazy; idle

Meanings

1 lazy; idle
2 sluggish; listless

Characters

懒

lan

lazy; idle

Examples

他太懒了，什么都不想做。

Tā tài lǎn le, shénme dōu bù xiǎng zuò.

He's too lazy and doesn't want to do anything.

别偷懒！

Bié tōulǎn!

Don't be lazy! / Don't slack off!

周末我想懒在家里不出门。

Zhōumò wǒ xiǎng lǎn zàijiā lǐ bù chūmén.

On weekends I want to laze around at home and not go out.

懒人有懒办法。

Lǎn rén yǒu lǎn bànfǎ.

Lazy people have lazy methods. (Necessity is the mother of invention.)

Tips

usage

偷懒 (tōu lǎn) means 'to slack off / to be lazy on the sly.' 懒得 (lǎn de) + verb means 'too lazy to do something': 我懒得出去 (I'm too lazy to go out).

Components

radical

忄 xīn

heart (left-form)

Left-side heart radical, the vertical form of 心 used along the left edge. It marks 懒 as a feeling or mental state — laziness as an inner disposition, an aversion to effort. Same family includes 怕 (fear), 快 (joy), 慢 (slow-tempered), 怀 (cherish), 慌 (panic) — the inner-life vocabulary.

phonetic

赖 lài

to rely on; deny

Right 赖 supplies the sound — lài to lǎn, with regular -ài/-ǎn rime variation in this series. 赖 also lends a faint semantic flavour: someone who shirks work and 'depends on' others fits the 'lazy' meaning well. The phonetic alone connects 懒 to 籁 (sound), 獭 (otter).