Word.ws English Dictionary

li

/liː/

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

Noun (1)

li (plural lis or li)

  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.1927, Chi Li, “Archaeological Survey of the Fêng River Valley, Southern Shansi, China”, in Explorations and Field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1926 (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections)...
    • In 1979, while we were conducting our archaeological work in Yucheng and Quwo, Shanxi province, I noticed another historical record in the Kuodizhi (a comprehensive account of geography written in 641), which stated that "the ancient city of Tang was 20 li west of Yuchengxian in Jiangzhou."1999 [1994], Zou Heng (邹衡), “The Early Jin State Capital Discovered: a Personal Account”, in Roderick Whitfield, Wang Tao, transl., Exploring China's Past: New Discoveries and Studies in Archaeology...
  2. 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.1980, Kim Il Sung, “Meeting with My Comrades-in-Arms in North Manchuria”, in Kim Il Sung Works, volume 48, Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, →OCLC, page 144
    Synonyms:
    Korean mile

Noun (2)

li (plural li)

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

Noun (3)

li (plural li)

  1. (Chinese) A meaningful ceremony or ritual; etiquette, behaviour.

Noun (4)

li (plural li)

  1. An ancient Chinese cauldron having three hollow legs.

Noun (5)

li (uncountable)

  1. In solfège, the raised sixth note of a major scale (the note A-sharp in the fixed-do system).
    Synonyms:
    A-sharp, B-flat, ta, te

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Li

Li

  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.2024 March 18, Nectar Gan and Yong Xiong, “A dissident in Europe is enraging Beijing. Now Chinese police are coming for his social media followers”, in CNN

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Li

Li

  1. A surname from Chinese

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Li

Li

  1. A surname from Chinese

Proper noun (4) capitalized: Li

Li

  1. 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.[1995 October, “Qishan Fort: Zhuge's Commanding Camp”, in China Tourism, number 183, H.K. China Tourism Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 56, column 1

Proper noun (5) capitalized: Li

Li

  1. 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.1977, Yee Chiang, “Kuei-lin and Yang-shuo”, in China Revisited, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 153
    • Cormorant fishing on the Li River near Kweilin. With increasingly serious water pollution, fishing with cormorants is becoming a rare sight in China.1985, Steven W. Mosher, Journey To The Forbidden China, Collier Macmillan, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 54f

Proper noun (6) capitalized: Li

Li

  1. A county of Changde, Hunan, China.

Proper noun (7) capitalized: Li

Li

  1. A surname from Korean, a variant of Lee and Rhee

Noun (6) capitalized: LI

LI (plural LIs)

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of love interest.

li meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Telugu and Malayalam

li in Tamil

லி

li in Marathi

लि

li in Telugu

లి

li in Malayalam

ലി
More languagesFewer languages
li in Kannada
ಲಿ
li in Gujarati
લિ
li in Thai
ลี้ líi
li in Vietnamese
lí

Examples of li in a sentence

  • Li Chunfeng mastered all sorts of subjects in youth and was an expert at calendry.
  • Li, a banker with a doctorate in statistics who was then at RiskMetrics, part of J.
  • Li Yansen, 67, is a retired engineer from Bayi Manufacturing in Nanyang City.

All 40 example sentences with li

Synonyms of li

All synonyms of li

Forms of li

Noun
plurallis
pluralli
alternative formri
pluralLIs
Proper noun
alternative formLee
alternative formLai
alternative formLe
alternative formRhee
alternative formRi
alternative formI
alternative formYi
alternative formRey
alternative formRhie

Plural of li: li

Origin of li

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).

Words formed from li

Phrases with li

Words that rhyme with li

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about li

What does li mean?
Li means the Chinese mile, a traditional unit of distance equal to 1500 chis or 150 zhangs, now standardized as a half-kilometer (500 meters).
What is li in Tamil?
Li in Tamil is லி. See Li meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is li?
Li can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce li?
Li is pronounced /liː/.
What is the plural of li?
The plural of li is lis.

Words near li in the dictionary

  1. Lhuntse
  2. LHV
  3. LHX
  4. LHXs
  5. Lhünzhub
  6. li
  7. li hing mui
  8. Li Lo
  9. li'l
  10. li'l ol'
  11. li'l old

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: li (page history and authors); Li (page history and authors); LI (page history and authors); li (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); li (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); li (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); li (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); li (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); li (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-li.wav.

Cite this entry: “li.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/li. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.