qín
verb #13,262

Meanings

  1. 1 to capture; to seize; to apprehend

Examples

Jǐngchá shēng qín le táofàn.
The police captured the fugitive alive.
Qínzéixiānqínwáng.
To catch the bandits, first catch the leader.

Tips

usage
is literary/formal. Common compounds: 擒获 (qínhuò, to apprehend), (shēngqín, to capture alive), (jiùqín, to be captured).

Components

radical
shǒu
hand (radical form of 手)
Left-side hand radical, the three-stroke side form of . Indexes in the hand-action family alongside to grab, to take, to catch. Capturing a beast or a fugitive is hand-work — the radical names the grasping fingers that close around prey.
phonetic
qín
bird; fowl (here phonetic + semantic)
Right side supplies the sound directly — qín to qín. also adds meaning: it originally meant any captured beast or bird, the spoils of the hunt. So is hand plus prey, the literal picture of seizing a quarry. The chengyu 'catch bandits, catch the king first' preserves this hunting register.

Stroke Order

qín