将 (jiàng): general; military commander

Meanings

1 general; military commander
2 high-ranking officer
3 general (in Chinese chess, black side)

Characters

将

jiàng

general; military commander

Examples

他是一位老将。

Tā shì yī wèi lǎojiàng.

He is a veteran commander.

千军易得，一将难求。

Qiānjūn yìdé, yī jiàng nánqiú.

It is easy to raise a thousand soldiers but hard to find one good general.

他是三国时代的名将。

Tā shì Sānguó shídài de míng jiàng.

He was a famous general of the Three Kingdoms era.

Tips

usage

As 将 the character is the bound morpheme for "general / commander" in nearly every Chinese military rank and military-historical compound: 大将 (senior general), 名将 (famous general), 上将 (full general / admiral), 中将 (lieutenant general), 少将 (major general), 将领 (high-ranking officer), 将帅 (commander-in-chief).

culture

In Chinese chess (象棋) the piece equivalent to the Western king is called 将 on the black side and 帅 on the red side. The fixed compound 将军 — read with jiāng — doubles as the rank "general" and the verb "to check / checkmate", which is why calling check in casual Mandarin sounds like calling out the rank.

Components

radical

寸 cùn

hand; thumb's-breadth (radical)

Bottom-right thumb-and-hand radical (Kangxi #41) — three strokes, a hand with a dot marking the pulse-point one thumb's-breadth from the wrist. Indexes 将 as action-with-the-hand: holding, presenting, leading. Family 寺, 封, 射, 尉 all involve precise hand actions. Together: "evening meat held in hand" → present, lead, take.

phonetic

丬 qiáng

split-wood; bed (left)

Left half-tree element — simplified from 爿, originally a vertical wooden plank or bed-post (the left half of 木 split down the middle). In traditional 將 this piece was both phonetic (qiáng drifted to jiāng) and faintly semantic (a wooden support). It survives as the left side of 状, 壮, 床 — all carrying a faint plank or bed sense.

semantic

夕 xī

evening; meat-remnant

Top-right 夕 — graphically "evening" (a half-moon with a dot inside), but historically the stylised remnant of 月 "meat" from traditional 將. The image is an offering: meat held above an altar. Combined with the hand below, the ancient ritual of presenting meat — from which came the verb senses "to take, to lead, to command".