衅 (xìn): quarrel; dispute; rupture

Meanings

1 quarrel; dispute; rupture
2 fault; flaw; opening for blame
3 blood-sacrifice on newly made ritual vessels (archaic)

Characters

衅

xìn

quarrel; rupture; blood-sacrifice

Examples

他故意向新邻居挑衅。

Tā gùyì xiàng xīn línjū tiǎoxìn.

He deliberately provoked a quarrel with the new neighbor.

去年边境的衅端日益加剧。

Qùnián biānjìng de xìnduān rìyì jiājù.

Border friction grew steadily worse last year.

别授人以柄，给他人可乘之衅。

Bié shòurényǐbǐng, gěi tārén kě chéng zhī xìn.

Don't give others an opening to blame you.

Tips

usage

Active modern compounds: 挑衅 (to provoke / pick a fight — extremely common in news and diplomatic language), 寻衅滋事 (a specific criminal-code charge: 'picking quarrels and stirring up trouble'), 衅端 (cause of strife / opening for trouble). The original 'blood-sacrifice' sense is now purely classical.

history

The earliest sense, preserved in 《左传》 and 《孟子》, was a ritual: when a new bell, drum, or chariot was completed, sacrificial blood was smeared into its cracks to 'seal' it — 衅钟 (consecrating a bell with blood). From 'crack / seam in a vessel' the meaning extended to 'a crack / flaw in relations' = grounds for dispute, the modern sense.

Components

ideograph

衅 xìn

quarrel; ritual blood-anointing

Modern simplified shape — heavily reduced from the traditional 釁 which showed 爨 (the stove / cooking element) over 酉 (wine-jar) plus 分 — together: sacrificial wine being poured and split apart on a vessel's seams. The simplified form keeps only a faint silhouette of that ritual scene. Indexed under Kangxi #143 血 (blood) by tradition; the radical isn't visibly present in the modern simplified glyph.

Filed under radical 血 (xuè, #143) by convention. 血 is not a separate component in 衅, so no strokes are highlighted.