绿 (lù): used in proper names

Meanings

1 used in proper names
2 (in 绿林) bandits' forest hideout

Characters

绿

lù

used in proper names

Examples

HSK 7-9

鸭绿江是中朝边界。

Yālùjiāng shì Zhōng Cháo biānjiè.

The Yalu River forms the China-Korea border.

HSK 7-9

他年轻时曾混迹绿林。

Tā niánqīng shí céng hùnjì lùlín.

In his youth he ran with the greenwood outlaws.

Tips

history

The lù reading is preserved in a handful of historical and place names. The most familiar is 鸭绿江, the river marking the China-North Korea border. 绿林 ('greenwood') refers to a place in Hubei where peasant rebels gathered at the end of the Western Han dynasty - the term became a generic word for outlaws living in forest hideouts.

mistakes

Don't read 鸭绿江 as Yālǜjiāng or 绿林 as lǜlín - these are the wrong tone and rime for the proper-noun reading. Standard Mandarin keeps lù in these set names even though the 'green' reading would feel more natural to a learner.

Components

radical

纟 sī

silk thread (left-side form of 糸)

Silk radical on the left - indexing semantic. Same origin as the lǜ reading: the character was first the name of a silk dye. In the lù reading the green-on-cloth association has faded and the graph mostly survives as a frozen name component.

phonetic

录 lù

record (here phonetic)

Phonetic 录 supplies the sound lù directly - no shift, no rounding. The lù reading of 绿 is in fact the older, more conservative reading; the everyday lǜ is the rounded variant that took over for the basic 'green' sense.