干 (gàn): to do; to work; to manage

Meanings

1 to do; to work; to manage
2 tree trunk; main part; backbone
3 cadre; official
4 capable; competent
5 to kill; to take out
6 pissed off; annoyed
7 to fuck

Characters

Simplified from traditional 幹 - a tree-trunk graphic with 倝 phonetic over 干 shield-shape, collapsed onto the simpler shield form in 1956.

Examples

HSK 1

你在干什么？

Nǐ zài gàn shénme?

What are you doing?

HSK 1

她是个很能干的人。

Tā shì gè hěn nénggàn de rén.

She's a really capable person.

HSK 7-9

说干就干，毫不拖延。

Shuō gàn jiù gàn, háobù tuōyán.

Said and done - no delay.

Tips

usage

As a verb 干 is blunter and more colloquial than 做. "What are you doing" is 你在干什么 (casual / a bit terse) vs. 你在做什么 (neutral). Tone of voice carries it: 你干什么 yelled is closer to "what the hell are you doing!"

register

Two charged senses reuse the same verb but stay slangy - the primary meanings (work / trunk / cadre / capable) are clean office and everyday vocabulary. As mainland slang 干 can mean "take out / kill" (干掉). As a standalone exclamation it is a crude vulgarity (closest to English "f**k!") - extremely common in Taiwan curses (usually written 幹 in traditional script). These slang reuses don't make the whole character vulgar; stick to 干活, 干部, 干杯 in polite company.

Components

ideograph

干 gàn

trunk; to do

Stylized residue of traditional 幹 - historically that character drew a tree-trunk graphic (倝 phonetic over 干). The 1956 reform discarded the trunk component and reused the simpler shield-graph 干 to write all three readings. The modern form no longer pictures a trunk; it inherits the shape of the shield character.

Filed under radical 十 (shí, #24) by convention. 十 is not a separate component in 干, so no strokes are highlighted.

Radical

Shield Kangxi #51

Pictograph of a forked weapon used both for offense and as a shield. As an indexing radical it organizes a small handful of characters such as 平 (level), 年 (year), 幸 (fortunate), 幹 (trunk/to do). Productivity is modest; the radical is more important for lookup than for meaning hints.