(qiàn) - apology, regret (bound morpheme) in Mandarin
qiànTraditional: 歉
#5096 of 5,000 Core 5000
Translation
apology, regret (bound morpheme)
Word origin
A phono-semantic character: the radical 欠 (to lack or owe) gives the sense of falling short, and 兼 (jiān) supplies the sound, hence regret or apology.
- Origin
- phono-semantic
- Root
- 欠 (to lack) + 兼 (jiān, phonetic)
Stroke order
歉
Examples
，。
Sorry, I'm late.
。
He apologised to me.
。
I'm really sorry to bother you.
。
I owe you an apology.
歉 (qiàn) means apology or regret. It does not stand alone but powers the two main ways of saying sorry: 抱歉 (sorry, often as a noun phrase) and 道歉 (to apologise).
Appears in 2 words
Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 歉.
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Go to my review queueThis word is part of lesson 102.