解 (jiè): to transport under guard; to es…

Meanings

1 to transport under guard; to escort (prisoners or valuables)

Characters

解

jiè

to transport under guard; to escort (prisoners or valuables)

Examples

警察把嫌疑人押解到法院。

Jǐngchá bǎ xiányírén yājiè dào fǎyuàn.

The police escorted the suspect under guard to the court.

古代犯人常常被解往边疆服役。

Gǔdài fànrén chángcháng bèi jiè wǎng biānjiāng fúyì.

In ancient times, criminals were often escorted under guard to the frontier to serve.

Tips

usage

The jiè reading is narrow and mostly bureaucratic / legal: 'to convey under armed escort.' You will almost only meet it in 押解 (police escort) or the historical 解送 (dispatch under guard). If you read about a Qing-era prisoner being moved between provinces, this is the verb.

Components

radical

角 jiǎo

horn

Horn radical on the left — the indexing radical and the focus of the action. 解 is one of the classic 会意 (compound-meaning) characters: the horn is the part being detached. The same radical also heads 触 (touch with horn) and 觉 (perceive).

semantic

刀 dāo

knife

Knife in the upper-right — the tool doing the cutting. Together with 角 (horn) and 牛 (ox) below, the picture is a butcher dismembering an ox: horn + knife + ox = to break apart. From this concrete butchery sense came every 'undoing' use — solving, explaining, untying.

semantic

牛 niú

ox

Ox at the bottom-right — the body being divided. The ancient cook of 庄子's 庖丁解牛 fable inhabits this character: he carves the ox so skilfully the blade never dulls. Whenever you see 解, recall the three-element scene — horn, knife, ox — and 'separate / untangle / solve' falls out naturally.