páng / bàng
adjective #1,969

Meanings

  1. 1 vast; boundless
  2. 2 majestic; surging

Examples

HSK 7-9
Chángjiāng bēnliú bùxī, qìshì páng bó.
The Yangtze flows on with vast, majestic force.
HSK 7-9
Gùgōng de jiànzhù dàqì páng bó, jǐnxiǎn huángjiā qìpài.
The Forbidden City's architecture is grand and imposing, conveying imperial grandeur.

Tips

usage
Bound to the binome - neither half stands alone in modern prose. Reserve for genuinely large-scale grandeur: rivers, mountains, monumental art, symphonies, sweeping prose. Sounds inflated for small-scale praise.
mistakes
Don't read this as bàng. The pound/scale reading bàng never appears inside . A Taiwan reading pāng is also recorded but rarely heard on the mainland.

Components

radical
shí
stone
Stone radical - here it sets a tone of weight and solidity that suits the 'vast, immovable' sense in . The radical also flags this as a chiefly literary glyph rather than a pure loanword sound.
phonetic
páng
side; beside
Phonetic - gives the literary reading páng directly, with tone preserved. The everyday reading bàng (pound, scale) drifted from the same phonetic.

Stroke Order

páng