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

HSK 5

他故意向新邻居挑衅。

Tā gùyì xiàng xīn línjū tiǎoxìn.

He deliberately provoked a quarrel with the new neighbor.

HSK 7-9

去年边境的衅端日益加剧。

Qùnián biānjìng de xìnduān rìyì jiājù.

Border friction grew steadily worse last year.

HSK 7-9

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.