券

quàn
noun HSK 6 #10,777

Measure Word

一张券 zhāng

Meanings

  1. 1 coupon; voucher; ticket
  2. 2 bond; certificate

Examples

HSK 1
Nǐ yǒu diànyǐng quàn ma?
Do you have movie tickets?
HSK 6
Zhè zhāng yōuhuìquàn kěyǐ dǎ bā zhé.
This coupon gives a 20% discount.
HSK 7-9
Guózhài shì yī zhǒng zhàiquàn.
Government bonds are a type of bond.

Tips

usage
Common compounds: 优惠券 (coupon), 入场券 (admission ticket), 债券 (bond), 证券 (securities). 券 by itself is rarely used alone in modern speech.
memory
The bottom part is 刀 (knife) - think of a ticket being cut or torn from a strip.

Components

radical
刀 dāo
knife
Bottom 刀 - the indexing knife radical. Ancient contracts were split into two halves with a knife; each party kept one piece, and the two could later be matched at the cut to verify the agreement. The knife at the base of 券 is literally the tool that made the document binding - a built-in etymology for 'ticket, voucher, certificate.'
phonetic
龹 juàn
rolled-up shape (here phonetic)
Top 龹 - the shared upper element of the 卷 family (卷 roll, 倦 weary, 拳 fist, 圈 ring, 蜷 curl). It supplies the sound juàn → quàn with the regular j/q alternation and carries the 'rolled-up, curled' image at the heart of every member of the series. Here it pictures a rolled-up document - the ancient form of a written contract.

Stroke Order

券 quàn