籃 meaning and stroke order
Basket; goal
How to write 籃, stroke by stroke
20 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 籃
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, grouped by pronunciation.
- basket (receptacle)
- basket (in basketball)
How 籃 is built
Phono-semantic (sound + meaning) character. Bamboo.
⺮ gives the meaning and 監 hints at the sound.
Radical: ⺮ (bamboo), shared by 149 characters on this site.
How to remember 籃
The bamboo top ⺮ tells you the meaning: baskets were woven from bamboo. The bottom 監 (jiān) gives the sound, so picture someone keeping watch over a bamboo basket.
籃 is the traditional form used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Mainland China writes it as 篮. It appears mostly in compounds like 籃子 (lánzi, basket) and 籃球 (lánqiú, basketball). Example: 我們去打籃球吧。(Wǒmen qù dǎ lánqiú ba.) Let's go play basketball.
Common mistake: Learners often confuse 籃 (lán) with 藍 (lán, blue), which has the grass radical 艹 on top instead of bamboo ⺮. They sound the same, so check the top: bamboo for basket, grass for blue.
Common words with 籃
Ordered by HSK level, then by how often they appear in everyday Chinese.
Questions about 籃
How many strokes are in 籃?
籃 is written with 20 strokes. The diagrams on this page number every stroke in the order it is written, with the new stroke shown in red.
What does 籃 mean?
籃 (lán) means basket; goal. A common word with it is 篮球 (lánqiú), meaning "basketball".
How do you pronounce 籃?
籃 is pronounced lán, in the second tone (rising).
What is the radical of 籃?
The radical of 籃 is ⺮, which carries the idea of "bamboo". Dictionaries list 籃 under this radical.
What is the simplified form of 籃?
籃 is a traditional character. Its simplified form is 篮, used in mainland China and Singapore.
Why does 籃 mean both a basket and the hoop in basketball?
The basketball hoop is called a basket because the earliest games used actual baskets as goals. Chinese borrowed the same idea, so 投籃 (tóulán) means to shoot at the basket.
How does 籃 get the meaning of cradle?
In 搖籃 (yáolán), a cradle is literally a rocking basket. It can also mean the birthplace of something, as in a cradle of civilization.