炼
liàn HSK4

smelt

炼 (煉) liàn frequency
smelt verb
to heat ore in order to extract metal or to purify metal

古代工匠就在这里采矿炼金。

gǔ​dài gōng​jiàng jiù zài zhè​lǐ cǎi​kuàng liàn​jīn.

Ancient craftsmen mined and smelted gold here.

refine verb
to purify or process substances such as oil, chemicals, or sugar through heating

传说他在深山中隐居，开炉炼丹。

chuán​shuō tā zài shēn​shān zhōng yǐn​jū, kāi​lú liàn​dān.

Legend has it that he lived in seclusion in the deep mountains, refining elixirs.

炼 (鍊) liàn
chain verb
variant of 链 liàn, chain

他在腰上系了一根粗粗的铁炼。

tā zài yāo shàng jì le yī gēn cū​cū de tiě liàn.

He tied a thick iron chain around his waist.

Frequency
Character
Written text
1,763rd most common 49.2 per million
Movie subtitles
2,070th most common 17.4 per million appears in 9% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
1.88 per million appears in 1% of films
Written text
18.1 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 3
HSK 3.0
Level 4
Traditional
煉
Strokes
9
Unicode
U+70BC

Sources
Definitions
CC-CEDICT
Frequency data
MTSU Chinese text computingSUBTLEX-CHBCC Corpus (BLCU)