來

lái

come, coming; return, returning; wheat

Meaning

  • Motion: To come or arrive; movement toward the speaker or established point of reference.
  • Return: Arriving at a place where one belongs or where the speaker is currently located.
  • Temporal: The future; that which is to come (e.g., subsequent years, generations, or upcoming events).
  • Botanical: Wheat (the original meaning of the glyph).

Grammar and usage

  • Directional Complement: Frequently attached to another verb to indicate that the action is directed toward the speaker or reference point.
  • Aspectual/Transitional: May suggest a transition into a state (e.g., "coming to be" or "becoming").

Distinctions

  • Contrast with 去: While 來 indicates movement toward the reference point, 去 indicates movement away from it.

History and forms

  • The meaning of "arrival" is a phonetic loan from the original botanical meaning (wheat).
  • To distinguish plants from the borrowed meaning of arrival, the glyph 萊 (goosefoot/weed) was later developed.
  • Variants: U+6765 (standard); U+8012 (a specialized semantic variant specifically associated with the botanical sense of wheat).

Translator notes

  • Establish the deictic center (who is speaking and where they are standing) to determine if the glyph implies a simple arrival, a return, or a directional shift.
  • In agricultural contexts, prioritize "wheat" before assuming motion.

Decontextualized translator aid. This page describes plausible lexical range; it does not choose what the glyph means in a particular passage.