曼

màn
noun #3,628

Meanings

  1. 1 graceful; prolonged
  2. 2 used in transliterations (e.g., Manchester, Manhattan)

Examples

HSK 6
Mànhādùn de fángjià hěn gāo.
Housing prices in Manhattan are very high.
HSK 7-9
Mànchèsītè shì Yīngguó de yī zuò dàchéngshì.
Manchester is a large city in England.

Tips

usage
曼 appears most often as a phonetic character in place names and foreign transliterations: 曼谷 (Bangkok), 曼彻斯特 (Manchester), 曼哈顿 (Manhattan).

Components

radical
曰 yuē
to say (here a stylised cap)
Top indexing radical 曰 (Kangxi #73) - graphically a wider variant of 日, traditionally meaning 'to say' (a mouth with the breath of speech inside). In 曼 this is a stylised remnant of the cap or kerchief in the original picture, where the ancient form showed a hand pulling a long veil down over the eyes. Read here as a shaped cap, not as 'speech.'
semantic
罒 wǎng
net; eye lying on its side
Middle 5 strokes - the horizontal-eye component (Kangxi radical #122 in its sideways form), here representing the eye itself peering out from under the cloth above. The picture is an eye half-veiled, conveying the languid, drawn-out quality that became 'graceful, prolonged' in 曼妙, 曼延.
semantic
又 yòu
right hand
Bottom 2 strokes - a right hand, the basic action component. In 曼 the hand is the one drawing the long veil downward over the eye, completing the slow-motion picture. Same hand in 友, 取, 受 - wherever a deliberate manual action is depicted.

Stroke Order

曼 màn