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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

爛

làn
rotten; spoiled; decayed
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 5
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 火
  • 21 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡ·raːns): semantic 火 (“fire”) + phonetic 闌 (OC *ɡ·raːn).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese火 “fire; flame (Classifier: 把 m; 團／团 m)”
  • soundChinese闌 “door screen”
    • meaningChinese門 “gate; door; entrance; opening; portal (Classifier: 扇 m mn; 道 m c; 度 c; 條／条 c; 隻／只 c; 片 mn)”
    • soundChinese柬 “letter; note; invitation”
      • ideaChinese束 “to bind; to tie up”
      • ideaChinese八 “eight”

Meanings

character
  1. rotten; spoiled; decayed
  2. well-cooked; soft; mushy
  3. broken; fragmented; shattered
  4. low-quality; poor; lousy
  5. to rot; to decay; to decompose; to spoil
  6. completely; thoroughly

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 食物熟透而鬆軟。 例：這鍋牛肉燉得很爛。
  2. 破碎的、破舊的。 例：破爛、破銅爛鐵
  3. 腐敗的。 例：爛梨、爛蘋果
  4. 光明、顯著。 例：燦爛、絢爛
  5. 紊亂而沒有條理。 例：爛頭寸、爛攤子
  6. 過分、過度。 例：爛醉、爛好人

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 爛 was written 字形演變

  1. 爛 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 爛 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 爛