伦敦 (Lún dūn) — London (capital of the United Kingdom)

Definition

noun

London (capital of the United Kingdom)

Single-morpheme word

构词法gòucífǎ

音译yīnyìTransliteration

The characters spell the sound of a foreign word; their individual meanings play no part.

The characters 伦敦 spell the foreign name London; individually they do not contribute meanings here.

Sound-only characters

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 倫; 伦 is its simplified writing.

人侖倫

Meaning part形符xíngfú

Sound part声符shēngfú

侖

侖lún倫lún

Same sound today

The traditional form 倫 uses 人 to show people and 侖 to give its sound; the simplified 伦 is a later shorthand.

Two or more meaningful parts placed together so that their meanings combine into a new one.

The form behind 敦 combines 亯, an ancestral shrine, with 羊, a sheep, showing a cooked goat as a sacrifice.

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