绿 (lǜ): green

Meanings

1 green

Characters

绿

lǜ

green

Contains 纟 (silk radical) - green-dyed silk.

Examples

HSK 2

绿灯亮了，可以走了。

Lǜdēng liàng le, kěyǐ zǒu le.

The green light is on, we can go.

HSK 4

春天来了，树叶变绿了。

Chūntiān lái le, shùyè biàn lǜ le.

Spring has come and the leaves have turned green.

HSK 4

他家的院子里种着绿色的植物。

Tā jiā de yuànzi lǐ zhòng zhe lǜsè de zhíwù.

Green plants are growing in his yard.

Tips

culture

Wearing a green hat (戴绿帽子) means your partner is cheating on you - never give someone a green hat as a gift in China. This dates back centuries to when certain disgraced men were made to wear green headwear.

usage

The pinyin lǜ uses the ü vowel. On a keyboard, type "lv" for 绿. Many learners confuse the pronunciation with "lu" - the lips should be rounded as if saying "ee" with pursed lips.

register

Almost every modern compound uses lǜ. The reading lù survives in a small set of proper-noun and classical contexts - most famously 鸭绿江 (the Yalu River on the China-Korea border) and 绿林 (greenwood - the bandit-haunt forest).

Components

radical

纟 sī

silk thread (left-side form of 糸)

Silk radical on the left - the indexing semantic. 绿 originally named the green dye obtained from a specific plant, used to colour silk. The radical anchors the color in its dyed-cloth origin. Joins the color-on-silk family: 红 (red), 紫 (purple), 绛 (deep red), 绯 (crimson), where each color name once referred to a specific silk dye.

phonetic

录 lù

record; copy (here phonetic)

Right component supplies the sound: lù to lǜ, just a tone/rounding shift. The original phonetic was 彔 'water dripping from a pulley'; the simplified 录 keeps the same sound. As a phonetic it also drives 碌 (busy / pebble) and 禄 (official salary) - a tight lu/lǜ family sharing the same right-side shape.