Chinese Character Wiki
然

rán

yes

Original meaning: 

burn

Phonosemantic compound. 灬 represents the meaning and 肰 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "burn", now written as 燃. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components
灬 meaning component

灬  Meaning component

biāo, huǒ

  

fire

灬 is a component form of 火.

肰 sound component

肰  Sound component

rán

  

dog meat

Evolution

然 Bronze script Early Spring and Autumn (~700 BC)

Bronze script

Early Spring and Autumn (~700 BC)
然 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
然 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
然 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

然  

rán

yes, certainly; pledge, promise; correct; right; so; thus; like this; -ly

Most common words with 然
Freq.
Word
Meaning

然后

after

当然

only natural

虽然

although

突然

sudden

自然

nature

Component uses

Sound component in 1 character (1 verified)

燃

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[n]a[n]

nyen

rán

so, thus; (adv suffix)


Statistics

HSK level 2

Appears in 99.8238% of movies

85th most common character in movies

55th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

12

Unicode

U+7136

Shuowen

“然，燒也。从火，肰聲。，或从艸、難。”


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