炭 — Chinese character
炭
tàn
carbon, charcoal, coal
- Pinyin
- tàn
- Radical
- 86 ⽕ (Fire)
- Strokes
- 9
- Components
- 山 灰
- Formation
- pictophonetic — ashes; meaning component 灰; sound component 山
- Japanese
- 炭 as a kanji
Common words with 炭
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 煤炭 | méi tàn | coal |
| 木炭 | mù tàn | charcoal |
| 焦炭 | jiāo tàn | coke (processed coal used in blast furnace) |
| 烧炭 (燒炭) | shāo tàn | to manufacture charcoal; to burn charcoal (often a reference to suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning) |
| 活性炭 | huó xìng tàn | activated carbon |
| 泥炭 | ní tàn | peat |
| 炭疽 | tàn jū | (medicine) anthrax; (horticulture) anthracnose; canker |
| 雪中送炭 | xuě zhōng sòng tàn | lit. to send charcoal in snowy weather (idiom); fig. to provide help in sb's hour of need |
| 石炭 | shí tàn | coal (old) |
| 火炭 | huǒ tàn | live coal; ember |
| 生灵涂炭 (生靈塗炭) | shēng líng tú tàn | people are in a terrible situation (idiom) |
| 涂炭 (塗炭) | tú tàn | extreme distress; in utter misery |
English words written with 炭
炭 in the Chinese classics
Occurrences: Mencius 2
Data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.