Kilo Lingo

(gāng) - just, just now, only in Mandarin

gāng

Traditional: 剛

Line drawing of 刚
Coloured illustration of 刚
HSK 3
#650 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

just, just now, only

Word origin

A phono-semantic compound: the 刂 'knife' radical and 冈 (gang) as phonetic. The character originally meant 'hard, firm' and is used as an adverb 'just now, only just'.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
刂 (knife radical) + 冈 (gang, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 刚

Examples

He just got home.

I just finished eating.

She just walked out the door.

I had just got home when I got a call.

She has only just learned to drive.

Appears in 2 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 刚.

Used in

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This word is part of lesson 13.