duàn
section
Original meaning:
forge metal
Pictograph of a hand holding a forging hammer (殳) and hitting a stone (石). Based on the original meaning "forge", now written as 鍛. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Components
Evolution

Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 段
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
paragraph | ||
stage | ||
method | ||
fragment (of speech etc) | ||
time interval |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*tˤo[n]-s | twanH | duàn | hammer |
Statistics
HSK level 2
Appears in 65.1770% of movies
655th most common character in movies
567th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Unicode | U+6BB5 |
Shuowen | “段,椎物也。从殳,耑省聲。” |
Sources
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