匾 (biǎn): horizontal inscribed plaque (hu…

Measure Word

一块匾 kuài

Meanings

1 horizontal inscribed plaque (hung above a door or on a wall)
2 shallow round bamboo basket

Characters

匾

biǎn

horizontal plaque

Examples

商店大门上悬挂着一块金色的匾。

Shāngdiàn dàmén shàng xuánguà zhe yī kuài jīnsè de biǎn.

A gilded plaque hung above the shop's main door.

匾上刻着三个大字。

Biǎn shàng kè zhe sān gè dàzì.

On the plaque are inscribed three big characters.

这块匾是从清朝流传下来的，已经有百年历史。

Zhè kuài biǎn shì cóng Qīngcháo liúchuán xiàlai de, yǐjīng yǒu bǎinián lìshǐ.

This plaque has been passed down since the Qing dynasty — it's a hundred years old.

Tips

culture

A 匾 (or fuller 匾额) is the wide horizontal wooden board you see over the entrance of temples, restaurants, ancestral halls and old shops. The text is usually gilded or carved, and a calligraphy plaque from a famous figure is a serious status object — many shops claim emperor-written ones. Vertical signs, by contrast, are 对联, not plaques.

memory

Hidden inside (匸, concealment) is 扁 'flat' — and that flat board IS the plaque. 扁 also gives the sound (no change), so this is a near-perfect phono-semantic: a flat thing, read biǎn.

Components

radical

匸 xì

conceal; cover from the side

Kangxi #23, visually almost identical to 匚 (#22) but indexed separately — the 'concealment' bracket. Wrap-then-close: top-and-left arm first, inner 扁 written next, bottom stroke seals it. Here it brackets and frames the flat plaque rather than 'hiding' it — semantic flavor stretched.

phonetic

扁 biǎn

flat; thin and wide

Does double duty: phonetic (biǎn → biǎn, identical) and semantic — 扁 'flat' captures the plaque's defining shape, since a 匾 is a flat horizontal board. Inside 扁 itself you can see 户 'door' over 册 'writing tablets' — fitting, since plaques originally meant words inscribed above a door.