瑙 (nǎo): agate (used in 玛瑙)

Meanings

1 agate (used in 玛瑙)

Characters

瑙

nǎo

agate (in 玛瑙)

Examples

这块玛瑙的颜色非常漂亮。

Zhèkuài mǎnǎo de yánsè fēicháng piàoliang.

The color of this piece of agate is very beautiful.

瑙字几乎只用于玛瑙这个词。

Nǎo zì jīhū zhǐyòng yú mǎnǎo zhège cí.

The character 瑙 is used almost exclusively in the word 玛瑙 (agate).

Tips

usage

瑙 is a bound morpheme — it essentially never appears alone. It only shows up in 玛瑙 (mǎnǎo, agate) and rare transliterations. The 王 (jade) radical signals that it belongs to a precious-stone word family.

Components

radical

王 yù

jade (radical form, originally 玉)

Left-side jade radical — written as 王 on the left, but read as 玉 (jade), the indexing radical. Marks 瑙 as a precious mineral: the second half of 玛瑙 (mǎnǎo) agate, a banded chalcedony semi-precious stone. Same radical heads 玛 agate, 珍 precious, 珠 pearl, 玻 glass.

semantic

巛 chuān

three streams (here graphic top of skull)

Upper-right 巛 — three flowing strokes that originally represented hair or stitched seams on top of a skull. In the right half of 瑙 (the same shape that anchors 恼 nǎo annoyed and 脑 nǎo brain), it caps the head outline below. Read it as part of the brain glyph, not as 'streams'.

phonetic

囟 xìn

fontanelle; crown of the skull (here phonetic)

Lower-right 囟 — the soft fontanelle on a baby's skull, with seam-lines inside the enclosure. Supplies the sound: xìn drifts to nǎo through the same phonetic alternation running 恼 nǎo annoyed, 脑 nǎo brain. Together with 巛 above, this whole side is the 'brain' shape from 脑.