Kunlun
name ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A mountain range in China forming the border between the Tarim Basin to its north and the Tibetan Plateau to its south, extending across the Chinese autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Tibet and province of Qinghai.
"Crossing the Altyn Tagh had proved hard enough, but no sooner had the travellers left those mountains behind and crossed the border into Tibet than they had plunged into the recesses of the Kunlun Mountains."
- 2 A mythical mountain or mountain range somewhere west of the North China Plain believed to be the home of Xiwangmu and the Peaches of Immortality, as well as other gods and Taoist immortals, and previously believed to help support the dome of the sky. Chinese
"[…] the Yellow Riuer […] is the other famous Riuer of that Kingdome, in greatneſſe and note, which ariſesth without the Kingdome to the Weſt, out of the Hill Cunlun, conjectured to bee the ſame whence Ganges ariſeth, or one neere to it."
Example
More examples"Crossing the Altyn Tagh had proved hard enough, but no sooner had the travellers left those mountains behind and crossed the border into Tibet than they had plunged into the recesses of the Kunlun Mountains."
Etymology
From the Mandarin 崑崙 /昆仑 (Kūnlún) and 崑崙山／昆仑山 (Kūnlún Shān), with the character 山 (shān) being an ambiguous reference to any raised place, inclusive of islands, hills, mountains, and mountain ranges. The characters 崑崙 /昆仑 (Kūnlún) are phono-semantic compounds adding 山 (shān) as a semantic component (形旁 (xíngpáng)) to the characters 昆 (kūn) and 侖／仑 (lún), which were presumably also homophones for Kunlun in Old Chinese—Zhengzhang's reconstructed pronunciation being /*kuːn.run/—but leaving its further development or original meaning uncertain. See also the Name section of the Wikipedia entry on the mythological Kunlun.