昆 kūn elder brother
How it came to be
The sun over two people, standing one behind the other. Two of a kind, lined up under the same sun. From this come 'together', 'a crowd' and 'the older of two brothers'.
用法
- Bound morpheme - it almost never stands alone in modern Chinese.
- Its one everyday job is the first syllable of 昆虫 kūnchóng (insect), a very common word.
- Otherwise it survives mainly in the formal/literary word 昆仲 kūnzhòng (elder and younger brothers), which learners will rarely need to produce.
- Don't try to use 昆 by itself to mean "brother" - that sense is archaic and only lives inside compounds.