qīng
noun #11,298

Meanings

  1. 1 hydrogen

Examples

HSK 5
Qīngqì shì zuì qīng de qìtǐ.
Hydrogen gas is the lightest gas.
HSK 7-9
Shuǐ shì yóu qīng hé yǎng zǔchéng de.
Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen.

Tips

memory
Gas radical () + (light) phonetic = the lightest gas element. Chinese chemistry characters often encode properties: (life-giving gas = oxygen), (dilute gas = nitrogen).

Components

radical
gas; air; breath
Outer wrap-around , pictograph of rising vapour. The indexing radical, used for every gaseous chemical element in modern Chinese chemistry: oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, helium. Wraps around the inside from the top and right, leaving an open lower-left corner for the phonetic to sit in.
semantic
yòu
right hand (here a graphic top stroke)
Upper of the two strokes tucked inside , a small -shaped stroke on top of . Simplifiers compressed the original phonetic into this minimal + stack to keep the character lean. Read as a graphic placeholder topping the phonetic; carries no independent meaning.
phonetic
gōng
work; craft (phonetic)
Lower-inside , supplies a phonetic loosely connected to qīng through the historical reading of the original full phonetic now compressed away. pictures a carpenter's square. Same coinage pattern as with , with : a small inside-character chosen to point at the sound.

Stroke Order

qīng