xiān
noun #43,437

Meanings

  1. 1 xenon (chemical element, symbol Xe)

Examples

Xiān dēng fāchū hěn liàng de lán bái guāng.
Xenon lamps give off a very bright bluish-white light.

Tips

memory
(gas) wraps — a noble gas whose name takes the xiān sound. Many gas-element names wrap their phonetic in the radical, like hydrogen and helium.

Components

radical
gas; air
The (gas) radical opens at the bottom and curves over the top, the standard wrapper for gaseous-element names. It tells the reader at a glance that is a gas, not a metal or non-metal solid.
phonetic
shān
mountain
Tucked inside is (mountain), used purely for sound. It nudges the reading toward xiān and carries no 'mountain' meaning in this coined element name.

Stroke Order

xiān