Li
name, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The Chinese mile, a traditional unit of distance equal to 1500 chis or 150 zhangs, now standardized as a half-kilometer (500 meters).
"It was a whole day's journey from I-ch'eng to Chü-wo which, in turn, is about 60 li east of Chiang Chou — one of the most important cities in southern Shansi and a center for curio-dealers."
- 2 A traditional Chinese unit of weight, equal to one-thousandth of a liang, or fifty milligrams.
- 3 A meaningful ceremony or ritual; etiquette, behaviour. Chinese
- 4 An ancient Chinese cauldron having three hollow legs.
- 5 In solfège, the raised sixth note of a major scale (the note A-sharp in the fixed-do system). uncountable
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- 6 Abbreviation of love interest. abbreviation, alt-of
- 7 Chinese distance measure; approximately 0.5 kilometers wordnet
- 8 The Korean mile, a traditional unit of distance equivalent to about 393 m.
"While scaling the Laoyeling Mountains, the Chinese Worker-Peasant Red Army, under the command of Mao Ze-dong and Zhu De, was successfully stepping up the historic 25 000-li Long March in China proper, breaking through the surrounding rings formed by Chiang Kai-shek’s army."
- 9 a soft silver-white univalent element of the alkali metal group; the lightest metal known; occurs in several minerals wordnet
- 1 being one more than fifty wordnet
- 1 A surname from Chinese
"Under the post, Li shared screenshots of private messages he received from followers who said they were interrogated by police."
- 2 A surname from Chinese
- 3 A surname from Chinese
- 4 A county of Longnan, Gansu, China.
"The West Hanshui River flows through the flatland of Qishan Township east of Lixian County, Gansu Province.[…] Zhuge launched his first northern expedition. He arrived at Qishan Mountain in Lixian County, where he set up his headquarters on the shore of the West Hanshui River."
- 5 A river in Guangxi, China.
"After breakfast the next day, Ho Li-chih came to invite Yang Shu-tien and me to the Li River for a boat trip to another county, Yang-shuo."
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- 6 A surname from Korean, a variant of Lee and Rhee
Example
More examples"Li Bai's work is the most famous of Chinese poetry."
Etymology
An early romanization of Chinese Mandarin 里 (lǐ). As a Korean unit, via the Yale romanization of Korean 리 (ri), from the Chinese distance.
From Mandarin 市厘 (lí).
From Mandarin 禮 /礼 (lǐ).
From Mandarin 鬲 (lì).
Altered from la, with the vowel changed to signify a raised note.
Transcription of 李 (Lǐ)
Transcription of 黎 (Lí)
Transcription of 理 (Lǐ)
From Mandarin 禮 /礼 (Lǐ).
Transcription of 漓 (Lí)
From Korean 이(李) (I) and 리(李) (Ri).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.