虹
Meanings
CC-CEDICT
- 1.rainbow
CC-CEDICT · CC BY-SA
Wiktionary
- 1.rainbow; primary rainbow (Classifier: 條／条 m c mn; 道 m; 逝 mn)
- 2.bridge
- 3.to fester
- 4.only used in 虹洞
- 5.a county in modern Anhui, China
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Etymology
Originally pictographic (象形) in the oracle bone script. The ancient Chinese regarded the rainbow as a two-headed dragon, as in an oracle-bone divination inscription: In the seal script, it has become a phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kroːŋs, *koːŋs, *ɡoːŋ): semantic 虫 (“insect; creature”) + phonetic 工 (OC *koːŋ). Probably non-Sino-Tibetan; compare Proto-Mienic *kluŋᴬ (“rainbow”), Thai รุ้ง (rúng, “rainbow”), Zhuang duzdoengz (“rainbow”), saidoengz (“rainbow”) (Schuessler, 2007). Benedict (1986) and Carr (1990) relate this to 龍 (OC *b·roŋ, *mroːŋ, “dragon”) and 紅 (OC *ɡoːŋ, “red”). Ferlus (2013) relates this to 江 (OC *kroːŋ, “river”), 洚 (OC *kruːŋs, *ɡruːŋ, *ɡloːŋ, *ɡluːŋ, “flood”), and 龍 (OC *b·roŋ, *mroːŋ, “dragon”), and posits that these words are derived from a root *-roŋ, with meanings related to moving water.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Stroke order
Components
Components from cjk-decomp · MIT
More examples & usage (AI)
Synonyms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Derived terms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA