蜷 (quán): to curl up

Meanings

1 to curl up
2 to huddle
3 to coil

Characters

蜷

quán

to curl up; to coil

Examples

猫蜷在沙发上睡觉。

Māo quán zài shāfā shàng shuìjiào.

The cat is curled up on the sofa sleeping.

她冷得把身子蜷成一团。

Tā lěng de bǎ shēnzi quán chéng yītuán.

She was so cold that she curled herself into a ball.

Tips

memory

蜷 has the insect radical 虫 (chóng) on the left, evoking how insects or worms curl up. The right side 卷 (juǎn, to roll) also hints at the meaning.

Components

radical

虫 chóng

insect; bug

Left insect radical — pictograph of a coiled worm or snake. The indexing radical for 蜷. The semantic logic is direct: a curled-up insect or snake is the prototype image of 蜷 'to coil, curl up,' which later extended to people huddling in fetal position.

phonetic

卷 juǎn

roll up; scroll

Right 卷 supplies the sound juǎn → quán with a regular shift. It also doubles as semantic: 卷 means 'to roll up,' the precise motion a coiling creature performs. So 蜷 is almost a perfectly tuned phono-semantic — both sides point at the same image.