chēn
verb

Meanings

  1. 1 (literary) to open the eyes wide in anger; to glare

Examples

樊哙进来项王
Fán Kuài chuǎng le jìnlái, chēn mù shì Xiàng Wáng.
Fan Kuai entered, his eyes blazing as he glared at the King of Chu.

Tips

history
Not used alone in modern Chinese, which uses for glaring. It survives in the classical phrase (to open the eyes wide in fury), famous from the Records of the Grand Historian; in Buddhist texts it also writes the anger of .
register
Classical literary only — seen in histories and old prose, not in modern conversation.

Components

radical
eye
The eye radical carries the meaning — this is an action of the eyes: opening them wide in anger.
phonetic
zhēn
true; here phonetic
The right side supplies the sound, drifting from zhēn to chēn, the same phonetic seen in (to be angry).

Stroke Order

chēn