shuāng
noun HSK 7-9 #8,769

Meanings

  1. 1 frost
  2. 2 cream (cosmetic or food topping)

Characters

The radical on top indicates weather; (xiāng) gives the sound. Frozen dew on cold mornings.

Examples

Jīntiān zǎoshang dìshàng yǒu shuāng.
There was frost on the ground this morning.
Tā měitiān dōu tú fángshàishuāng.
She applies sunscreen every day.
Shuāngjiàng shì qiūtiān de zuìhòu yīgè jiéqì.
Frost Descent is the last solar term of autumn.

Tips

usage
doubles as 'cream' in product names: 面霜 (miànshuāng, face cream), 防晒霜 (fángshàishuāng, sunscreen), (bīngshuāng, icy frost). The 'cream' sense comes from frost's white, thin-layer appearance.
culture
霜降 (Shuāngjiàng, Frost Descent) is the 18th of 24 solar terms in the Chinese calendar, marking when frost first appears — usually around October 23.

Components

radical
rain
Top rain radical — a cloud with four water droplets falling beneath it. It indexes in the weather family: snow, thunder, dew, fog, haze. Anything precipitated from the sky lives under . Frost is just rain that froze before it landed, so the placement is exact.
phonetic
xiāng
appearance; mutual (here phonetic)
Bottom supplies the sound xiāng → shuāng with the regular x/sh alternation. Same phonetic appears in think, box, wing-room. Faint semantic flavor: was originally 'looking at a tree with the eye,' and frost is what you see on the bare branches at dawn — sky-rain meeting the morning tree.

Stroke Order

shuāng