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强

強
jiàng / qiáng / qiǎng
adjective #669

Meanings

  1. 1 stubborn; obstinate
  2. 2 unyielding; headstrong

Examples

这孩子脾气真倔强。
Zhè háizi píqi zhēn juéjiàng.
This kid has a really stubborn streak.
她很倔强，不肯认错。
Tā hěn juéjiàng, bù kěn rèncuò.
She is stubborn and refuses to admit she's wrong.

Tips

usage
The jiàng reading is almost entirely locked to one compound: 倔强 (stubborn). If you only ever learn it inside that word, you'll cover 99% of real usage. Outside this compound the reading is rare in modern speech.
memory
Three readings, three textures: qiáng (rising) = strong, qiǎng (dipping) = to force, jiàng (falling) = stubborn. The falling tone suits jiàng — a stubborn person digs in and refuses to budge, the way the tone drops and stays down.

Components

radical
弓 gōng
bow
Bow radical on the left — the indexing semantic. The original meaning was a tough, hard bow, since tension is what makes a bow strong. Strength was conceptualized through weapon-tension. Same radical anchors 弱 weak, 引 to draw, 张 to stretch open.
phonetic
虽 suī
rice-weevil (here phonetic)
Right side (口 over 虫) supplies the sound: 虽 drifted to qiáng across millennia of Old Chinese sound shifts. 虽 also depicts a hard-shelled weevil; the tough-insect imagery merged with the bow on the left to give the modern senses 'strong, tough, forceful'.

Stroke Order

强 jiàng