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禁

jìn / jīn
verb #4,360

Meanings

  1. 1 to prohibit; to forbid
  2. 2 to imprison; to confine
  3. 3 taboo; prohibition; ban

Examples

公园里禁止吸烟。
Gōngyuán lǐ jìnzhǐ xīyān.
Smoking is prohibited in the park.
他被囚禁了十年。
Tā bèi qiújìn le shí nián.
He was held captive for ten years.
紫禁城是明清两代的皇宫。
Zǐjìnchéng shì Míng-Qīng liǎng dài de huánggōng.
The Forbidden City was the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Tips

usage
jìn covers anything forbidden, restricted, or locked away. Core verbs: 禁止 (prohibit), 严禁 (strictly forbid), 监禁 (imprison), 囚禁 (hold captive), 拘禁 (detain), 软禁 (place under house arrest). Nouns: 禁令 (ban), 禁忌 (taboo), 禁区 (restricted area), 宵禁 (curfew). Modern online sense: 封禁 (ban an account), 禁言 (mute / silence a user).
memory
Top 林 (forest) + bottom 示 (altar) = an altar in a sacred grove. Such groves were forbidden to ordinary feet, hence 'prohibit'. The mnemonic 'forbidden forest' actually maps to the etymology.
mistakes
Two readings. jìn (4th tone, this entry) is 'forbid / prohibit / confine' — the active sense. The 禁 reading (1st tone, see the jīn entry) is 'to bear / endure / contain', restricted to a handful of compounds: 不禁 (cannot help but), 禁不住 (can't hold back), 情不自禁 (overcome by emotion), 弱不禁风 (too frail to take a breeze).

Components

radical
示 shì
altar; show; sign
Bottom altar radical (Kangxi #113) — a pictograph of a stone altar where offerings were displayed. The indexing radical of 禁. Marks 禁 as a sacred-and-prohibited concept: things forbidden by the gods, by ritual, or by law. Same radical heads 神 (god), 祖 (ancestor), 祝 (pray), 福 (blessing) — the entire ritual / spiritual family. 禁 = altar in the forest = sacred ground, hence forbidden.
semantic
林 lín
forest
Top 林 — two trees, the picture of a forest (itself a semantic compound 木+木). Carries the literal core: 禁 originally referred to the forbidden grove around a sacred altar, a forest where access was restricted. A faint phonetic link is there too (lín → jìn, regular palatalisation), so 林 doubles as a soft sound-bearer.

Stroke Order

禁 jìn