龍 Radical 212 — a dragon; imperial, majestic; the largest and most powerful
a dragon; imperial, majestic; the largest and most powerful
Also written 龙 — the same radical in a different position inside the character.
Where the shape comes from
A mythical serpentine creature drawn in profile: a great crested or horned head with an open, whiskered mouth on one side, a long sinuous body, legs and curling tail trailing on the other — one of the most elaborate pictographs among the radicals, later straightened into the two balanced halves of the modern form. The dragon was never a monster in Chinese tradition but a bringer of rain and rivers and, by extension, the emblem of the emperor himself, whose face, throne and robe were all once called 龙颜, 龙椅, 龙袍, the dragon’s countenance, seat and robe. It survives in 恐龙, a dinosaur, literally a fearsome dragon, a nineteenth-century coinage for creatures nobody had ever called by that name before, and in 龙头, a tap or faucet, or a leader, literally a dragon’s head, water once imagined pouring from the mythical beast’s open jaws.
characters filed under 龍
No published character on HSK Guide is filed under this radical yet. Character explorer.