克利夫兰 (Kè lì fū lán) — Cleveland (city in Ohio, USA)

Definition

noun

Cleveland (city in Ohio, USA)

克利夫兰。
Wǒ cóng lái méi yǒu qù guò Kè lì fū lán.
I have never been to Cleveland.
克利夫兰。
Kè lì fū lán Shì měi guó de yí gè chéng shì.
Cleveland is a city in the United States.
克利夫兰。
Wǒ míng nián xiǎng qù Kè lì fū lán lǚ yóu.
I want to travel to Cleveland next year.

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 only spell the foreign name Cleveland; they carry no meaning of their own here.

Sound-only characters

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

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

利 combines 禾 (grain) and 刀 (knife), showing a knife used to cut grain.

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

假借jiǎjièLater borrowed for its sound alone — the picture has nothing to do with today’s meaning.

夫 originally drew a man. It was borrowed purely for its sound to write a pronoun, so the picture and the pronoun meaning are unrelated.

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 蘭; 兰 is its simplified writing.

艹闌蘭

Meaning part形符xíngfú

艹Written in full as艸cǎoplant

Sound part声符shēngfú

闌

闌lán蘭lán

Same sound today

In the traditional form 蘭, 艹 marks it as a plant and 闌 stands for the sound; the simplified 兰 is a later shorthand, not the original parts.

Appears in