很 (hěn): very

Meanings

1 very
2 quite

Characters

很

hěn

very; quite

Examples

今天很冷。

Jīntiān hěn lěng.

Today is very cold.

她很漂亮。

Tā hěn piàoliang.

She is very pretty.

这个很好吃。

Zhège hěn hǎochī.

This is very delicious.

Tips

grammar

In Chinese, 很 is often required between a subject and an adjective even when you don't mean 'very.' 她很漂亮 can mean 'she is pretty' (not necessarily 'very pretty'). Without 很, the sentence implies comparison.

mistakes

Don't say *她是漂亮. Chinese adjectives don't need 是 (to be). Say 她很漂亮 instead.

Components

radical

彳 chì

step; walk

Step radical on the left — three strokes evoking left-foot motion, the left-side form often called 双人旁. Originally 很 meant 'to disobey, to go against,' so the walking radical fits — moving cross-grain to expectations. The modern grammatical sense 'very' is a phonetic borrowing; the radical no longer carries semantic weight today.

phonetic

艮 gěn

blunt; the Gen trigram

艮 supplies the sound, lightly retoned to hěn. Same phonetic stem also feeds 跟 (with), 根 (root), 痕 (trace), 恨 (hate) — a tight gēn/hěn/hèn family. 艮 itself is one of the eight trigrams (mountain) but in 很 it is essentially sonic.