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li.

The Chinese mile, a traditional unit of distance equal to 1500 chis or 150 zhangs, now standardized as a half-kilometer (500 meters).

2 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/liː/
  1. The Chinese mile, a traditional unit of distance equal to 1500 chis or 150 zhangs, now standardized as a half-kilometer (500 meters).

  2. The Korean mile, a traditional unit of distance equivalent to about 393 m.

Where this word comes from

An early romanization of Chinese Mandarin 里 (lǐ). As a Korean unit, via the Yale romanization of Korean 리 (ri), from the Chinese distance.

noun/liː/
  1. A traditional Chinese unit of weight, equal to one-thousandth of a liang, or fifty milligrams.

Where this word comes from

From Mandarin 市厘 (lí).

noun/liː/
  1. A meaningful ceremony or ritual; etiquette, behaviour.

    Chinese
Where this word comes from

From Mandarin 禮 /礼 (lǐ).

noun/liː/
  1. An ancient Chinese cauldron having three hollow legs.

Where this word comes from

From Mandarin 鬲 (lì).

noun/liː/
  1. In solfège, the raised sixth note of a major scale (the note A-sharp in the fixed-do system).

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

Altered from la, with the vowel changed to signify a raised note.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.