然

Translingual

Stroke order

Stroke order

Han character

然 (Kangxi radical 86, 火+8, 12 strokes, cangjie input 月大火 (BKF), four-corner 2333₃, composition ⿱肰灬)

Derived characters

• 燃, 橪, 㒄, 撚, 㜣, 繎, 嘫

References

• Kangxi Dictionary: page 675, character 12
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 19149
• Dae Jaweon: page 1086, character 20
• Hanyu Da Zidian (first edition): volume 3, page 2213, character 5
• Unihan data for U+7136

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Chinese

trad.		然
simp. #		然
alternative forms		𤉷 ⿱犬一 (second-round simplified)

Glyph origin

Historical forms of the character 然
Warring States	Shuowen Jiezi (compiled in Han)	Liushutong (compiled in Ming)
Bronze inscriptions	Small seal script	Transcribed ancient scripts

Characters in the same phonetic series (肰) (Zhengzhang, 2003) 

	Old Chinese
嘫	*rneːn
然	*njen
肰	*njen
繎	*njon, *njen
燃	*njen
蹨	*njenʔ, *neːnʔ
橪	*njenʔ, *ʔneːn
撚	*neːnʔ

Phono-semantic compound (形聲／形声, OC *njen) : phonetic 肰 (OC *njen, “dog meat”) + semantic 火 (“fire”) – to burn. Also ideogrammic compound (會意／会意) . The derivative 燃 (OC *njen) stands for the original word in Modern Chinese.

Note that the upper left component is analyzed as 肉 (meat), and in the component 肰 it is drawn as a tilted 月 (“moon”), appearing more like 夕 (“evening”) with an extra stroke; compare 祭, 將.

Definitions

(deprecated template usage) 然

1. ^† so; thus; in this manner; like this
   • 然後／然后  ―  ránhòu  ―  then [lit. after things turn out this way]
   • 不然  ―  bùrán  ―  or else, otherwise [lit. not so]
   • 非然也。 [Classical Chinese]  ―  Fēi rán yě. [Pinyin]  ―  It is not so. / That is not how it is.
2. ^† Suffix forming adverbs, sometimes also adjectives, with an abstract meaning of “in the manner of, like”.
   • 顯然／显然  ―  xiǎnrán  ―  apparently, obviously
   • 果然  ―  guǒrán  ―  as expected [lit. as a result]
   • 龐然大物／庞然大物  ―  pángrándàwù  ―  giant, something enormous [lit. a bigly big thing]
   • 喟然長嘆／喟然长叹  ―  kuìránchángtàn  ―  to sigh (with 喟 being an onomatopoeia)
3. ^† but
   • 然而  ―  rán'ér  ―  but

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Japanese

Kanji

然

(grade 4 “Kyōiku” kanji)

1. suffix after nouns to express likeness
2. and; and then
3. so, be as it is
4. and therefore
5. however (as shikashi)
6. a certain thing

Readings

• Go-on: ねん (nen, Jōyō)
• Kan-on: ぜん (zen, Jōyō)
• Kun: もえる (moeru, 然える); しかれども (shikaredomo, 然れども); しかして (shikashite, 然して)

Compounds

Compounds

• 偶然(ぐうぜん) (gūzen): coincidence
• 砉然(けきぜん) (kekizen): giving off a noise like separation of skin from bone
• 全然(ぜんぜん) (zenzen)
• 突然(とつぜん) (totsuzen)
• 判然(はんぜん) (hanzen): clearness

Etymology

Kanji in this term
然
ぜん Grade: 4
on’yomi

From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Middle Chinese 然 (nyen, “-like”).

Suffix

然(ぜん) • (-zen) 

1. Indicates a state (no specific semantic content)

References

• Halpern, Jack: New Japanese-English Character Dictionary -Kenkyusha 1990

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Korean

Hanja

然 • (yeon) (hangeul 연, revised yeon, McCune–Reischauer yŏn, Yale yen)

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.

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Vietnamese

Han character

(deprecated template usage) 然 (nhiên)

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.