圆
Tap the pinyin to hear it
circle; round; circular; spherical; (of the moon) full; unit of Chinese currency (yuan); tactful; to make consistent and whole (the narrative of a dream or a lie)
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
How to remember it
round · Heisig RSH #550
pent in + 员 employee
Keyword method from Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi.
Words with 圆
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 不圆通 | inflexible; unaccommodating | |
| 外圆内方 | lit. outside-flexible, inside-firm (idiom); fig. velvet glove | |
| 花好月圆 | lit. lovely flowers, round moon (idiom); fig. everything is wonderful; perfect happiness; … | |
| 包圆儿 | to buy the whole lot; to take everything remaining | |
| 打圆场 | to help to resolve a dispute; to smooth things over | |
| 圆白菜 | round white cabbage (i.e. Western cabbage) | |
| 圆子 | kind of dumpling; sticky rice ball | |
| 大圆 | great circle (in spherical geometry) | |
| 管圆线虫 | "eel worm", a parasitic worm carrying meningitis | |
| 圆心 | center of circle | |
| 自圆其说 | (idiom) to make a story or theory consistent; to give a plausible explanation; to plug the… | |
| 外接圆 | circumscribed circle (of a polygon) | |
| 日圆 | variant of 日元[ri4 yuan2] | |
| 圆通 | flexible; accommodating | |
| 圆光 | radiance emanating from the head; halo | |
| 走圆场 | to walk around the stage (to indicate scene changes) | |
| 圆点 | dot | |
| 半圆形 | semicircular | |
| 方圆 | perimeter; range; (within) a radius of ... | |
| 瓜无滚圆，人无十全 | no gourd is perfectly round, just as no man is perfect (proverb) |
Sound family
Characters sharing the sound component 员 — compare how they read.