利雅得 (Lì yǎ dé) — Riyadh (capital of Saudi Arabia)

Definition

noun

Riyadh (capital of Saudi Arabia)

利雅得。
Lì yǎ dé Shì shā tè ā lā bó de shǒu dū.
Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia.
利雅得。
Wǒ míng nián xiǎng qù Lì yǎ dé lǚ xíng.
I want to travel to Riyadh next year.
利雅得。
Lì yǎ dé Shì yí zuò fēi cháng xiàn dài huà de chéng shì.
Riyadh is a very modern city.

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 利雅得 only spell the foreign name Riyadh; none carries meaning here.

Sound-only characters

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.

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

隹牙雅

Meaning part形符xíngfú

隹隹zhuīa short-tailed bird

Sound part声符shēngfú

牙

Same sound today

雅 pairs 隹, a short-tailed bird, with 牙 as its sound part; the bird was a rook/crow, and the sense was extended to refined.

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

The old form 㝵 showed a hand picking up a cowry, meaning to obtain; later changes turned that picture into 得.