jiāng
adjective HSK 7-9 #9,541

Meanings

  1. 1 stiff
  2. 2 rigid
  3. 3 numb
  4. 4 deadlocked

Examples

Wǒ de shǒuzhǐ dòngjiāng le.
My fingers are frozen stiff.
Qìfēn yīxiàzi jiāng le.
The atmosphere suddenly became awkward.

Tips

memory
has the person radical next to (boundary). Think of a person who has become as rigid as a boundary wall — frozen stiff.

Components

radical
rén
person
is the left-side form of (person). Here it points to a body — originally described a corpse stiff with rigor mortis, the literal frozen-person sense that broadened to any rigid, deadlocked situation.
phonetic
jiāng
boundary; bordered field
supplies the sound jiāng directly — two fields stacked between three boundary lines. Same phonetic in (jiāng, frontier) and (jiāng, rein). The fixed-boundary imagery also reinforces the rigid, immovable feeling of .

Stroke Order

jiāng