chén
noun #12,076

Meanings

  1. 1 morning; dawn

Examples

Zǎochen hǎo!
Good morning!
Tā měitiān qīngchén pǎobù.
He jogs every morning at dawn.

Tips

usage
is mainly used in: 早晨 (morning), 清晨 (early morning/dawn), (morning exercise — very common in Chinese parks). More literary than 早上 (morning). Contains (sun) — the time when the sun rises.

Components

radical
sun; day
Top sun radical — a small square with a stroke inside, pictograph of the sun. Sitting above , it depicts the sun rising at the start of the day. The indexing radical for and a clean semantic anchor: a time-of-day word like morning, dusk.
phonetic
chén
5th earthly branch; dawn period (phonetic + semantic)
Bottom supplies the sound chén exactly, with a strong semantic echo: itself is the fifth earthly branch, designating the hour 7-9 AM in the traditional twelve-hour system. So reads almost tautologically — "sun-at-morning-hour" — a doubled marker for the early daylight hours.

Stroke Order

chén