瘫 (tān): to be paralyzed

Meanings

1 to be paralyzed
2 to collapse; to slump

Characters

瘫

tān

paralyzed; to collapse

Examples

HSK 3

他累得瘫在沙发上。

Tā lèi de tān zài shāfā shàng.

He was so tired he collapsed onto the sofa.

HSK 4

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'.