HSK 4 · Food

咸 xián “salted” in Chinese

Traditional 鹹

What 咸 means

  1. salted
  2. salty
  3. stingy
  4. miserly

How to say 咸

  • Pitch chart of the second tone: rises from mid to high, 3 to 5 on the five-level scale咸xián2nd tone, rising

咸 in a sentence

  1. 你不能喝海水，因为它太咸了。

    Nǐ bùnéng hē hǎishuǐ, yīnwèi tā tài xián le.

    You can’t drink seawater because it’s too salty.

    Sentence #334680 from Tatoeba

  2. 这顿饭不咸。

    Zhè dùn fàn bù xián.

    The meal is not salty.

    Sentence #2778828 from Tatoeba

How 咸 is built

Each colour is one part of the character. Parts repeat across thousands of characters, so learning them makes new words easier. See all 214 in our radicals chart.

The character 咸 (xián) with each of its parts in a different colour
咸xiánall
  • 戊part of the character
  • 一one · yī
  • 口mouth · kǒu

How to write 咸

咸 9 strokes

Watch the order, then press Try writing it and draw each stroke in the grid. Each stroke is checked as you go.

咸 (xián) stroke order chart: each stroke of the character in the order you write it
Stroke order chart for 咸 (xián). Red marks the next stroke, so you can copy it onto paper one step at a time.

Words related to 咸

More words: Food & Drink

吃chī · to eat喝hē · to drink菜cài · dish糖táng · sugar味道wèidao · flavour小吃xiǎochī · snack西红柿xīhóngshì · tomato盐yán · salt

FAQs

咸 (xián) means “salted” or “salty”. It is an HSK 4 word.
Say it xián: xián with a 2nd tone. Press Listen at the top of this page to hear it, or Slowly to hear each tone clearly.
In Traditional characters, used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, 咸 is written 鹹. The pronunciation is the same.
Add a Chinese (Simplified) pinyin keyboard to your phone or computer, type xian with no tone marks or spaces, then choose 咸 from the suggestions. Typing xian into this dictionary’s search box finds it too.
咸 is an HSK 4 word in the HSK 2.0 word lists.

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Sources: meaning and pinyin checked by a native Mandarin teacher against the official HSK lists. Extra meanings from CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Example sentences from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR). Character parts and stroke order from Make Me a Hanzi.