唵 meaning and stroke order
To eat with one's hands; used in transliterations
How to write 唵, stroke by stroke
11 strokes in order. Each box adds the next stroke in red. Write top to bottom and left to right, and finish enclosing strokes last.
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Meaning of 唵
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, grouped by pronunciation.
- (interjection) oh!
- (dialect) to stuff sth in one's mouth
- (used in buddhist transliterations) om
How 唵 is built
Phono-semantic (sound + meaning) character. Mouth.
口 gives the meaning and 奄 hints at the sound.
Radical: 口 (mouth), shared by 428 characters on this site.
How to remember 唵
The mouth 口 on the left tells you this is about eating or sounds, and 奄 (yǎn) on the right gives the sound ǎn. Picture a mouth stuffing in food by hand, or a mouth chanting the long sound om.
Today 唵 is most often seen in Buddhist mantras, where it writes the sacred syllable om. In some dialects it also means to toss food into your mouth by hand, and it can work as a surprised interjection. Example: 唵嘛呢叭咪吽 (ǎn ma ní bā mī hōng), the mantra Om mani padme hum.
Common mistake: Learners often confuse 唵 with 俺 (ǎn, I or we in northern dialects), which shares the same sound and the same right side 奄 but uses the person radical 亻. Also check the left side carefully so you do not read it as 掩 (yǎn, to cover), which has the hand radical 扌.
唵 in example sentences
Real sentences from the Tatoeba project, with pinyin and English.
Questions about 唵
How many strokes are in 唵?
唵 is written with 11 strokes. The diagrams on this page number every stroke in the order it is written, with the new stroke shown in red.
What does 唵 mean?
唵 (ǎn) means to eat with one's hands; used in transliterations.
How do you pronounce 唵?
唵 is pronounced ǎn, in the third tone (dipping).
What is the radical of 唵?
The radical of 唵 is 口, which carries the idea of "mouth". Dictionaries list 唵 under this radical.
Is 唵 used in everyday modern Chinese?
Not much. Most speakers know it from Buddhist chants and temple texts. The dialect sense of stuffing food in your mouth is regional and rarely written.
Why does a Buddhist mantra use 唵 for om?
Translators picked characters with the 口 radical to show that a word is a sound being pronounced, not a meaning. 唵 had a sound close to om, so it became the standard way to write that syllable.