chuān
wear
Original meaning:
bore a hole
Alludes to creating a hole (穴) with one's teeth (牙). Based on the original meaning "bore a hole". The meaning later expanded to "pass through" and "wear".
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
chuān
penetrate, pierce, drill; wear; to wear; to put on; to dress; to bore through; to pierce; to perforate; to penetrate; to pass through; to thread
Most common words with 穿
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
to wear | ||
to pass through | ||
to pass through | ||
to put on (clothes etc) | ||
attire |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*tʰo[n] | tsyhwen | chuān | bore through |
Statistics
HSK level 1
Appears in 77.7671% of movies
408th most common character in movies
785th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Unicode | U+7A7F |
Shuowen | “穿,通也。从牙在穴中。” |
Sources
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