瘫 (tān): to be paralyzed

Meanings

1 to be paralyzed
2 to collapse; to slump (colloquial)

Characters

瘫

tān

paralyzed; to collapse

Examples

他累得瘫在沙发上。

Tā lèi de tān zài shāfā shàng.

He was so tired he collapsed onto the sofa.

交通系统完全瘫了。

Jiāotōng xìtǒng wánquán tān le.

The transportation system completely collapsed.

Tips

usage

Beyond the medical meaning (paralysis), 瘫 is widely used colloquially to describe flopping down from exhaustion — 瘫在床上 (sprawled on the bed). Also used for systems breaking down: 网络瘫了 (the network is down).

Components

radical

疒 nè

sickness; illness (radical)

Sickness radical 疒 — a person leaning on a sickbed. The indexing radical, marking 瘫 as a disease term, specifically paralysis (瘫痪). The same wrapper groups 瘫 with 病 (illness), 痛 (pain), 疯 (mad), 痪 (paralyzed) — most of the body's pathology vocabulary lives under this roof.

phonetic

难 nán

difficult (here phonetic)

Inner 难 supplies the sound — nán shifted to tān through historical n/t initial alternation. Same phonetic family includes 滩 (shoal), 摊 (spread out), 瘫 — all sharing the *n-/t- alternation. A faint semantic echo too: paralysis makes movement very 'difficult'.