Kilo Lingo

(xìn) - letter, trust, believe, message in Mandarin

xìn

Traditional: 信

Line drawing of 信
Coloured illustration of 信
HSK 3
#843 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

letter, trust, believe, message

Word origin

The character 信 (xìn) 'trust, letter, to believe' is an ideographic compound: a person 亻 standing beside words 言, conveying the idea of standing by one's word, hence trust and, by extension, a letter.

Origin
ideograph
Root
亻 (person) + 言 (speech/words), 'standing by one's word'

Stroke order

Stroke order for 信

Examples

fēng

He wrote me a letter.

I trust you.

She believed what he said.

I received his letter yesterday.

fēng

Please post this letter.

信 (xìn) means letter, trust, believe, message. It is used as a noun in everyday Mandarin speech.

Appears in 6 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 信.

Used in

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This word is part of lesson 17.