拿 (ná): to take

Meanings

1 to take
2 to hold
3 to get

Characters

拿

ná

to take; to hold

合 (to join) + 手 (hand) — joining hands together to grasp.

Examples

请帮我拿一下。

Qǐng bāng wǒ ná yíxià.

Please help me hold this for a moment.

你拿的是什么？

Nǐ ná de shì shénme?

What are you holding?

我去拿水。

Wǒ qù ná shuǐ.

I'll go get some water.

Tips

history

拿 combines 合 (to close/join) and 手 (hand) — bringing the hand together to grasp something.

Components

radical

手 shǒu

hand

Bottom indexing hand radical — the full 4-stroke 手 form, rather than the 3-stroke 扌 used elsewhere. Anchors 拿 in the family of hand-action verbs. Together with 合 'close' on top, the whole character literally reads 'closing-the-hand' — the precise moment of grasping.

semantic

合 hé

to join; close together

Top component is 合 'to close, bring together'. Contributes the closing-around meaning: fingers wrapping around the object to grasp it. Phonetically 合 is also a rough phonetic for ná (hé → ná, onset shift in the labial-nasal series). A semantic-phonetic compound where the top adds both sound hint and grasping image.