How to Write 鹂 (lí) — Meaning “Oriole”

Imagine a beautiful (丽) bird (鸟) singing in a tree — that bird is the oriole. The left side 丽 has two '人' (person) characters sitting side by side, which can remind you of a pair of orioles often seen together. This visual link helps you recall both the sound lí and the meaning.

Pay attention to the left component 丽: it has a horizontal stroke at the top, then 冂 (enclosure) with two '人' inside. The right side 鸟 has 5 strokes, and the whole character is balanced with 丽 slightly narrower. A common mistake is making 丽 too wide or forgetting the dot on top of 鸟, so practice the proportions carefully.

鹂 specifically means 'oriole' and contains the bird radical 鸟, while 袅 describes something slender and elegant, like willow twigs or smoke, and uses the clothing radical 衣. 鸪 is also a bird radical but refers to the partridge (like in 鹧鸪), so the difference is in the second component and the specific bird type. Visually, 鹂 has 丽 on the left, whereas 袅 has 鸟 on top and 衣 below, and 鸪 has 古 on the left.

鹂 appears almost exclusively in the word 黄鹂 (huáng lí), meaning 'oriole,' often in poetry and nature descriptions. In Chinese culture, the oriole symbolizes happiness and the arrival of spring, famously appearing in Du Fu's poem 'Two orioles sing amid the willows green.' You will rarely see 鹂 alone in daily conversation, but it is a beautiful character for literary or artistic contexts.

Common words containing 鹂 include: 黄鹂 (huáng lí) — oriole; 鹂鸟 (lí niǎo) — Oriole bird; 鹂鸣 (lí míng) — The oriole's song.