间 (jiàn) · gap; interval; crack

Meanings

1 gap; interval; crack
2 to separate; to keep apart
3 to drive apart; to sow discord

Characters

间

jiàn

gap; interval; crack

Examples

HSK 4

他想离间我们两个人，但是没成功。

Tā xiǎng líjiàn wǒmen liǎng gè rén, dànshì méi chénggōng.

He tried to sow discord between the two of us, but did not succeed.

HSK 7-9

把秧苗间开五十厘米。

Bǎ yāngmiáo jiàn kāi wǔshí límǐ.

Plant the seedlings at a spacing of fifty centimeters.

HSK 7-9

间谍常常隐藏在众目睽睽之下。

Jiàndié chángcháng yǐncáng zài zhòngmùkuíkuí zhīxià.

Spies often hide in plain sight.

Tips

history

The jiàn reading is the older meaning. The traditional form 間 pictured moonlight, and later sunlight, falling through a chink between two doors - literally a 'gap.' From that concrete gap came the verb senses: to put a gap between things (separate), and to push a gap into a relationship (drive apart, sow discord). The jiān reading 'between / room / interval' is a later tone-shift specialization for the spatial sense.

register

Standalone 间 as a verb ('to thin out, to space apart') is literary and farming-technical - you will mostly meet this reading bound inside compounds: 间隔 (interval), 间隙 (gap), 间谍 (spy), 间断 (interrupted), 间接 (indirect), 间歇 (intermittent), 离间 (drive a wedge), 反间计 (counter-espionage stratagem).

Components

radical

门 mén

door; gate (radical)

Outer door/gate radical (Kangxi #169) - simplified from 門, originally a pair of swing-doors. Surrounds 间 from above and the sides. Carries the visual core: the character pictures a slit between the two doors, hence 'between, interval, room.' The same radical anchors 问 (ask), 闻 (hear), 闹 (noisy), 闪 (flash) - things that happen at, through, or behind a doorway.

semantic

日 rì

sun (semantic)

Inner sun component - pictograph of the sun with a central stroke. The compound reads: sunlight through the crack between two doors = gap, interval, moment between. Originally written 閒 with 月 'moon' (moonlight in the doorway); the 日-version 間 became standard and was later simplified to 间. Used as a measure word for rooms because each room is a partitioned interval.