noun

Meanings

  1. 1 (literary) the hard hollow shaft of a feather; a quill
  2. 2 (literary, by extension) a bird's wing

Examples

Kěn sì línjiān hé, fēi juàn shǐ zhī huán.
Like a bird among the trees, it flies until weary and only then knows to return.

Tips

history
Not used alone in modern Chinese. It survives in literary words like 羽翮 (feathers and quills, hence wings) and the phrase 振翮 (to spread the wings and soar), built on the feather radical .
register
Literary only — found in classical poetry and set phrases about flight, not in everyday speech.

Components

radical
feather
The feather radical gives the core meaning — the stiff central shaft of a feather, and by extension a bird's wing.
phonetic
an ancient cauldron; here phonetic
The left side , a tripod cauldron elsewhere, here serves only as the phonetic; its reading drifted to hé and it carries no cauldron meaning.

Stroke Order