(jūn) - army, the military, troops in Mandarin
jūnTraditional: 軍
Translation
army, the military, troops
Word origin
The old form 軍 shows 車 (chariot) under 冖 (a covering or encirclement): war chariots drawn up in a ring, and so an army in camp.
- Origin
- compound
- Root
- 冖 (cover, encircle) + 車 (chē, chariot)
Stroke order
军
Examples
。
He joined the army at eighteen.
。
My father was a soldier.
。
Life in the army is highly regimented.
，仗。
That year, the armies of the two countries fought here.
。
He spent thirty years in the military.
军 (jūn) is the army, and in modern Chinese it works mostly as a bound morpheme rather than a free-standing noun. You meet it inside 军队 the armed forces, 军人 a serviceman, 将军 a general, 空军 the air force and 海军 the navy. Learn the character and a whole rank of vocabulary comes with it.
It does stand alone in a few set frames. 参军 is to enlist, 从军 is to serve, and 军中 means within the army. Those are fixed patterns, not a general licence to use 军 as a countable noun.
The trap is treating it like the English word "army" and building sentences such as 我看见一个军. That is wrong: for a body of troops you need 军队, and for the individual you need 军人 or 士兵. 军 on its own is closer to the English prefix in "military service" than to the noun in "an army".
Where this fits
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军: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Mandarin word "军" (army, the military, troops): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 59.