xuān
noun

Meanings

  1. 1 (literary) the orange day-lily
  2. 2 (literary) one's mother (from 萱堂)

Examples

Běi táng yǒu xuān xī, héyǐ wàng yōu?
There is a day-lily in the northern hall; how can it make one forget sorrow?

Tips

history
has little standalone use today. It named a day-lily believed to dispel sorrow; because the plant grew by the mother's quarters, became a poetic word for one's mother. It now survives mainly in given names and that literary metaphor.
register
Literary and onomastic; the everyday word for the flower is .

Components

radical
cǎo
grass; plant
is the grass radical, a top-form of , marking the character as a plant — here the day-lily.
phonetic
xuān
to declare; proclaim
supplies the sound xuān exactly, with no tone change.

Stroke Order

xuān