noun

Meanings

  1. 1 glass

Examples

HSK 5
Bōli mén cā de hěn gānjìng.
The glass door was wiped very clean.
HSK 7-9
Zhè dòng dàlóu de wàiqiáng dōu shì bōli de.
The exterior walls of this building are all glass.

Tips

usage
Only used in 玻璃 = glass. and always appear together as a pair.

Components

radical
jade (left-side form of 玉)
Left is the jade radical - three stones threaded on a string, the side-form of on the left. Indexes in the precious-stone family with pearl, flaw, disc. It is bound to in 玻璃, glass, treated as a kind of artificial jade.
phonetic
to leave; depart
Right side supplies the sound lí directly, no drift. alone means 'to leave, to separate' - here purely phonetic, with no semantic role. Same phonetic in fence, drip, (which only really occurs in 玻璃). The whole compound 玻璃 transliterates from a Sanskrit term for crystal.

Stroke Order