How to Write 娈 (luán) — Meaning “beautiful”

Picture a beautiful woman (女) who is "also" (亦) elegant, so 女 + 亦 = beautiful. For the pronunciation luán, imagine saying "luan" like the start of "lullaby" to recall a gentle beauty.

Start with the left radical 女: write the slant stroke, then two horizontal strokes. Then write 亦: dot on top, horizontal stroke, left-falling stroke, and curved hook. Keep the right side narrow to balance the character; a common mistake is making 亦 too wide.

娈 means graceful beauty and uses 女 + 亦. 妊 means pregnancy and uses 女 + 壬. 妍 also means beautiful but uses 女 + 开 (meaning open). Visually, 娈 has a dot on top of 亦, while 妍 has 开 without a dot, and 妊 has 壬 with a different bottom stroke.

娈 is rare in everyday speech and appears mainly in literary or classical terms like 婉娈 (graceful and beautiful) and 娈童 (pretty boy, often historical). It is not in the HSK vocabulary list, so you will mostly encounter it in poetry or old texts.

Common words containing 娈 include: 婉娈 (wǎn luán) — Graceful and beautiful; 娈婉 (luán wǎn) — gentle and beautiful; 娈童 (luán tóng) — pretty boy.