HSK Guide

Radical 95profound, mysterious; dark red, black

xuán (second tone, rising)

profound, mysterious; dark red, black

Radical 955 strokes0 characters

Where the shape comes from

A skein of silk dyed and twisted until it darkens toward black-red, the deep, hard-to-name colour giving the word its drift toward profound, mysterious, too deep to see the bottom of. Strung on a bow, the same twisted cord gives 弦, a bowstring, a string; and the colour’s abstract, hard-to-fathom sense stands alone in 玄学, metaphysics, the study of what lies beneath the visible world.

characters filed under

No published character on HSK Guide is filed under this radical yet. Character explorer.