顸 (hān) · thick; stout; coarse

Meanings

1 thick; stout; coarse
2 dawdling; muddle-headed

Characters

顸

hān

thick; muddle-headed

Examples

HSK 4

别颟顸地干活。

Bié mānhān de gànhuó.

Don't muddle through your work like that.

HSK 7-9

他砍了一根顸实的棍子当拐杖。

Tā kǎn le yì gēn hānshí de gùnzi dāng guǎizhàng.

He cut a thick, solid stick to use as a walking staff.

Tips

usage

Two living compounds. (1) 颟顸 - 'muddle-headed / sloppy / careless in handling things', a classic Lu Xun-era vocabulary word for bureaucratic incompetence. (2) 顸实 - dialect / colloquial 'thick and solid' (of a stick, rope, neck). Northern speech only.

register

Northern dialectal and literary. 颟顸 is used in essays and political satire ('our bureaucracy is 颟顸'); the 顸实 sense is regional and informal.

Components

radical

页 yè

head; page

Right 页 (Kangxi #181, head) - the head-radical anchors the original sense: a thick or muddle 'head' = stout / dull-witted. Same radical drives 颟 (its partner in 颟顸), 颜, 顽, 顶.

phonetic

干 gān

dry; trunk

Left 干 supplies the sound (gān → hān, dental shift). Same phonetic in 汗 and 罕, which preserve the h-initial.