掘 (jué): to dig; to excavate

Meanings

1 to dig; to excavate
2 to unearth

Characters

掘

jué

to dig; to excavate

The 扌(hand) radical on the left shows it's a manual action. 屈 (qū) on the right gives a rough phonetic hint.

Examples

他在院子里掘了一个坑。

Tā zài yuànzi lǐ jué le yīgè kēng.

He dug a hole in the yard.

考古队正在掘一座古墓。

Kǎogǔ duì zhèngzài jué yī zuò gǔmù.

The archaeology team is excavating an ancient tomb.

别自掘坟墓。

Bié zìjuéfénmù.

Don't dig your own grave.

Tips

mistakes

Don't confuse 掘 (jué, to dig) with 挖 (wā, to dig). 掘 is more literary and formal, while 挖 is the everyday spoken word. In conversation, use 挖; in writing or set phrases, use 掘.

memory

Picture a hand (扌) bent over (屈) digging into the earth — that's 掘.

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand (radical form of 手)

Left-side hand radical — the 3-stroke compressed form of 手. Indexing radical, marking 掘 as a hand action; here, digging or excavating. Same hand family: 挖 dig, 抓 grab, 推 push, 拿 take. The radical announces that the right side names how the hand is being used.

phonetic

屈 qū

bend; submit

Right 屈 supplies the sound — qū drifting to jué via the regular k-/j- palatalization that affected this whole series (掘, 倔, 崛, 厥). The 'bend' meaning of 屈 doesn't enter semantically; it is a sound-tag. The full picture: a hand making a curving, scooping motion downward — the body-language of digging.