Kilo Lingo

(shén) - god, deity, spirit in Mandarin

shén

Traditional: 神

Line drawing of 神
Coloured illustration of 神
HSK 4
#891 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

god, deity, spirit

Word origin

神 (shén) is a phono-semantic compound of 礻, the altar or spirit radical, and 申 (shēn) as the phonetic. The altar radical signals the religious sense, giving 'god', 'deity' or 'spirit'.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
礻(altar/spirit radical) + 申 (shēn, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 神

Examples

They believe in god.

There are many gods in this story.

Her skills are simply god-like.

yòu

She believes a god is protecting her.

He believes there is a god in heaven.

神 (shén) means god, deity, spirit. It is used as a noun in everyday Mandarin speech.

Appears in 3 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 神.

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This word is part of lesson 18.