Kilo Lingo

(diǎn) - a bit, o'clock, point, dot in Mandarin

diǎn

Traditional: 點

Line drawing of 点
Coloured illustration of 点
HSK 2
#178 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

a bit, o'clock, point, dot

Word origin

点 (traditional 點) is a phono-semantic compound: in the traditional form 黑 (black) is the meaning element and 占 (zhān) the phonetic, a small black mark or dot. From 'dot' it extends to 'a bit', 'point', and 'o'clock'.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
黑 (hēi, black) + 占 (zhān, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 点

Examples

Three o'clock.

A little difficult.

You hit the nail on the head.

Let's meet at three o'clock in the afternoon.

Please give me a little water.

点 (diǎn) means a bit, o'clock, point, dot. It is used as a noun in everyday Mandarin speech.

Where this fits

Appears in 6 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 点.

Used in

Grammar articles

(17)

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Mandarin · Free printables

点: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Mandarin word "点" (a bit, o'clock, point, dot): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

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This word is part of lesson 4.