kuà
noun #14,543

Meanings

  1. 1 hip; crotch; groin

Examples

Tā shuāngshǒu chā zài kuà shang.
He put both hands on his hips.
Hán Xìn rěnshòu le kuà xià zhī rǔ.
Han Xin endured the humiliation of crawling between someone's legs.

Tips

history
(kuà xià zhī rǔ, 'the humiliation under the crotch') is a famous idiom from the story of Han Xin (), a great general of the Han dynasty. As a young man, a bully forced him to crawl between his legs. Han Xin endured it rather than fight, showing patience that later led to greatness.

Components

radical
ròu
flesh; meat
⺼ is the flesh-meat radical, the left-side form of . Body parts almost universally take this radical — (hip / crotch) sits next to (waist), (leg), (belly) and (foot). Visually identical to (moon) but semantically distinct.
phonetic
kuā
boast; exaggerate
(kuā) supplies the sound, tone-shifted to kuà. itself originally depicted a person with arms outstretched — a fitting echo for hips and stride. Same phonetic appears in kuà (step over), kuǎ (collapse) and kuà (carry on the arm).

Stroke Order

kuà