檐 (yán): eaves

檐 (yán) is a Chinese character meaning “eaves.” Classified as HSK Level 7-9 (HSK 3.0 Standard, CLEC 2022), it is composed of 木 (semantic) and 詹 (phonetic). It ranks #3059 in character frequency (SUBTLEX-CH corpus).

Etymologically derived, 檐 wood. Its radical form 木 (tree) appears in many related characters such as 木 (mù, wood/tree), 林 (lín, forest, woods), 森 (sēn, forest (dense)).

Native pronunciation
HSK 7-9Radical: 木 tree17 strokesFrequency #3059木 semantic詹 phonetic

Definitions

  1. eaves

Etymology & Origin

檐

pictophoneticwood

Decomposition: ⿰木詹 (layout: left-right)

Components:木semantic詹phonetic

Stroke Order

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

Practice writing 檐 with real-time feedback — trace each stroke in the correct order and build muscle memory in the HanziFeed app.

Words & Compounds

Common Compounds

WordPinyinMeaning
屋檐wū yáneaves
帽檐mào yánbrim (of a hat)
飞檐走壁fēi yán zǒu bìto leap onto roofs and vault over walls (usually associated with martial arts)
房檐fáng yáneaves
密檐塔mì yán tǎmulti-eaved pagoda
封檐板fēng yán bǎnbarge board
挑檐tiǎo yáneaves
檐廊yán lángveranda
檐篷yán péng(HK) canopy
9
Total compounds
22
As first character
44
As last character
33
As middle character

檐 appears in 9 compound words: 22 as the first character, 44 as the last, and 33 in a middle position. Compound statistics computed from SUBTLEX-CH and HSK 3.0 vocabulary data.

Strongest Collocations

Characters that most frequently co-occur with 檐 in natural Chinese text, ranked by NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information) — a statistical measure of association strength.

歇xiē
0.6194,914 co-occurrences
顶dǐng
0.5997,734 co-occurrences
攒cuán
0.568420 co-occurrences
翘qiáo
0.559642 co-occurrences
涩sè
0.515330 co-occurrences
悬xuán
0.5041,374 co-occurrences
砖zhuān
0.4981,134 co-occurrences
柱zhù
0.4942,796 co-occurrences
廊láng
0.4881,782 co-occurrences
单dān
0.4876,846 co-occurrences

Idioms & Chengyu (1)

飞檐走壁fēiyánzǒubìHSK 7+

to leap onto roofs and vault over walls

phrase

Example Sentences

AI-Generated

秋风起，檐叶变黄，铺满了林间小路。

qiū fēng qǐ , yán xié biàn huáng , pù mǎn le lín jiān xiǎo lù .

As the autumn wind blows, the leaves turn yellow and carpet the forest paths.

Character Family

木 Radical Family — Characters sharing the tree radical

案àn柏bǎi板bǎn棒bàng杯bēi标biāo柄bǐng材cái槽cáo柴chái

Related Characters

木mù林lín森sēn树shù机jī杯bēi松sōng李lǐ枝zhī根gēn

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 檐 (yán) mean in Chinese?
檐 (yán) primarily means "eaves." It is classified as HSK Level 7-9, making it an expert-level character. It ranks #3059 in character frequency.
What's the difference between 檐 and 赡?
檐 (yán) and 赡 (shàn) are often confused. confusable. The key distinguishing feature: 木 vs 贝 (same 詹 component).
How many strokes does 檐 have?
檐 is written with 17 strokes. The correct stroke order matters for recognition and handwriting speed — practice with the animated guide above to build proper technique.
What is the radical of 檐?
The radical associated with 檐 is 木 (tree). This radical appears in many characters related to tree.
What are the components of 檐?
檐 is composed of: 木 (semantic), 詹 (phonetic). Its IDS decomposition is ⿰木詹 with a left-right layout. Understanding the components helps with both memorization and recognizing related characters.
What are common words containing 檐?
Common words with 檐 include: 屋檐 (wū yán, "eaves"); 帽檐 (mào yán, "brim (of a hat)"); 飞檐走壁 (fēi yán zǒu bì, "to leap onto roofs and vault over walls (usually associated with martial arts)"); 房檐 (fáng yán, "eaves"); 密檐塔 (mì yán tǎ, "multi-eaved pagoda"). There are over 9 compound words containing this character.
Is 檐 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
Yes, 檐 is written the same way in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Practice writing 檐 with real-time feedback

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Character data sourced from Unihan (Unicode Consortium), SUBTLEX-CH frequency corpus (Cai & Brysbaert, 2010), and Make Me a Hanzi (stroke data). Collocation strength measured via NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information). Verified by the HanziFeed linguistics team.

HSK classification follows the HSK 3.0 Standard (Center for Language Education and Cooperation, CLEC, 2022 revision). Idiom data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Data last verified: March 2026.