Kilo Lingo

(quán) - fist; entire, complete, all in Mandarin

quán

Traditional: 拳

Line drawing of 硂
Coloured illustration of 硂
HSK 5
#601 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

fist; entire, complete, all

Word origin

拳 (quán), 'fist', is a phono-semantic compound with the hand radical 手 at the foot and 龹 supplying the sound. The hand radical suits the meaning of a clenched hand. The page also lists the unrelated sense 'entire' carried by the homophone 全; the recorded headword character is non-standard and is flagged for review.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
手 (hand radical) + 龹 (phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 拳

Examples

He struck out with force.

He works with all his strength.

He goes to the park every morning to do tai chi.

He has studied tai chi for many years.

He struck the table once with his hand.

拳 (quán) means fist and is used in martial arts contexts (拳击, boxing; 太极拳, tai chi; 功夫, kungfu). It also appears in compounds related to fighting (出拳, to throw a punch; 挥拳, to swing a fist). Note: the source entry shows simplified 硂 which appears to be a data anomaly - the correct simplified character is 拳. 拳头 (quán tóu) means fist as a noun phrase. The measure word for punches is 拳 itself (打了一拳, threw one punch).

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This word is part of lesson 13.