抢 (qiāng): to knock against; to strike (es…

Meanings

1 to knock against; to strike (esp. one's head on the ground in grief or rage)
2 against; contrary in direction

Characters

抢

qiāng

to knock against; to strike (esp. one's head on the groun…

Examples

母亲听到消息，呼天抢地。

Mǔqīn tīngdào xiāoxi, hū tiān qiāng dì.

When the mother heard the news, she cried out to heaven and beat her head against the ground.

小船抢风而行。

Xiǎo chuán qiāng fēng ér xíng.

The small boat sailed against the wind.

Tips

register

This qiāng reading is literary and survives mostly in fixed classical phrases. Modern speakers almost never produce qiāng spontaneously — they reach for qiǎng. The two phrases worth knowing are 呼天抢地 (anguished wailing, beating the head on the ground) and 抢风 (against the wind, nautical).

memory

Link qiāng to the violent-contact sense: head against ground, boat against wind — the meaning is forced collision with something opposing. The everyday 抢 (snatch, rush) shares the same hand-and-force energy but is directed at grabbing rather than colliding.

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand

Left hand radical — the side-stacking variant of 手. In the qiāng reading the hand-image bends from 'snatch' to 'strike with force': beating the head against the ground in classical anguish phrases, or a boat's bow pushing against a headwind.

phonetic

仓 cāng

warehouse; storehouse

Right 仓 is the phonetic. The qiāng reading sits closer to the original cāng vowel than qiǎng does, preserving the first-tone level pitch. Same phonetic family covers the cāng/qiāng/chuàng cluster: 创, 沧, 苍, 舱.