叉 (chā): fork

Meanings

1 fork
2 pitchfork
3 cross shape

Characters

叉

chā

fork; cross shape

Pictograph of crossed lines — the shape of a fork or an X

Examples

你用叉还是用筷子？

Nǐ yòng chā háishi yòng kuàizi?

Do you use a fork or chopsticks?

在错的地方打个叉。

Zài cuò de dìfang dǎ gè chā.

Put a cross on the wrong answer.

刀叉是西餐的餐具。

Dāochā shì xīcān de cānjù.

Knife and fork are Western dining utensils.

Tips

usage

叉 also means an 'X' mark. 打叉 = to put a cross/X mark, 打勾 (dǎ gōu) = to put a checkmark. In China, a cross (✗) means wrong and a checkmark (✓) means correct.

Components

radical

又 yòu

right hand (radical)

Body of 叉 is 又 — a right hand with three fingers extended. The whole character is then this hand pierced by a small dot, making the 'forking' or 'crossing' explicit. 又 is the indexing radical and links 叉 to the family of hand-action characters: 取, 友, 受, 双, 反.

ideograph

丶 zhǔ

intersecting mark

A tiny dot lodged between the fingers of 又 — an abstract marker pinpointing the spot where two things meet. Without this dot the character would just be 又 (right hand); the dot turns the hand into a forked, X-shaped object, hence chā 'fork' and the 'cross-mark' sense.