赚 (zuàn): to cheat; to swindle; to hoodwi…

Meanings

1 to cheat; to swindle; to hoodwink

Characters

赚

zuàn

to cheat; to swindle; to hoodwink

Examples

吕布赚开城门，杀将进来了。

Lǚ Bù zuàn kāi chéngmén, shā jiāng jìnlái le.

Lü Bu tricked the city gate open and his troops poured in.

他用计赚虎离山。

Tāyòng jì zuàn hǔ lí shān.

He used a ruse to lure the tiger from the mountain.

Tips

register

Classical and stage-novel only. You meet zuàn almost exclusively in Ming-Qing vernacular fiction — 三国演义, 水浒传, 醒世恒言 — where a general 赚 an enemy out of a fortress by feigning surrender. Modern Mandarin uses 骗 or 诱骗 instead. Recognise the reading when reading classical novels; do not use it in conversation.

mistakes

Same character, opposite reputations. zhuàn = honest profit (the everyday workhorse). zuàn = trick someone (a literary fossil). Context disambiguates instantly: money words → zhuàn; military stratagems or vernacular-novel scenes → zuàn.

Components

radical

贝 bèi

cowrie shell; money

Left cowrie radical (Kangxi #154). On the zuàn reading the money link is faint but present — a swindle takes property from someone else, so the trade family still indexes the deception sense. Same radical home as 赌 (gamble), 贿 (bribe), 贪 (greed) — the dishonest end of the money family.

phonetic

兼 jiān

concurrent; double

Right phonetic 兼. The zuàn reading is a Middle Chinese variant preserved for the 'deceive' sense — same phonetic series as the zhuàn reading, just a different historical layer. Same-phonetic family: 廉, 嫌, 谦. The everyday 'earn money' sense lives on the zhuàn page.