cùn
(hand), inch
Original meaning:
pulse point on wrist
Pictograph of a hand with a line marking a spot on the wrist. In traditional Chinese medicine this spot on the wrist where the pulse can be taken is called the 寸口.
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 寸
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
inch (unit of length equal to 2.54 cm.) | ||
inch | ||
size | ||
lit. not an inch of steel (idiom); unarmed and defenseless | ||
money market |
Component uses
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[tsʰ]ˤu[n]-s | tshwonH | cùn | thumb; inch |
Statistics
HSK level 5
Appears in 15.9058% of movies
1712th most common character in movies
1904th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 3 |
Unicode | U+5BF8 |
Shuowen | “寸,十分也。人手卻一寸動,謂之寸口。从又,从一。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.233-234
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