爛

简 烂 · 繁 爛
Mandarin · pinyin làn

Meanings

  1. soft; mushy
  2. well-cooked and soft
  3. to rot; to decompose
  4. rotten
  5. worn out
  6. chaotic; messy
  7. utterly; thoroughly
  8. crappy; bad
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Characters in this entry

爛
Look up this written character
烂
làn · rotten, spoiled, decayed
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4 · lan4

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Connected dictionary

1character link6same-tone records
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Read this spelling in Classical texts

Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

爛 · find source passages ↗ · 烂 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

laan6

Cantonese word readings for 爛. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

CanCLID contributors · CC BY 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

character

  1. (of fruits, etc.) rotten; spoiled; decayed
  2. well-cooked; soft; mushy
  3. broken; fragmented; shattered
  4. low-quality; poor; lousy
  5. to rot; to decay; to decompose; to spoil
  6. completely; thoroughly
  7. bright; brilliant; gorgeous; magnificent
  8. (Cantonese) to be addicted to
  9. (Cantonese) extremely
  10. used in 爛漫/烂漫 (lànmàn)

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack