啃 (kěn): to gnaw

Meanings

1 to gnaw
2 to nibble
3 to bite at

Characters

啃

kěn

to gnaw; to nibble

Examples

小狗在啃骨头。

Xiǎogǒu zài kěn gǔtou.

The puppy is gnawing on a bone.

他啃了一口苹果。

Tā kěn le yī kǒu píngguǒ.

He took a bite of the apple.

这本书太难了，我啃了一个月。

Zhè běn shū tài nán le, wǒ kěn le yī gè yuè.

This book was so hard, I struggled through it for a month.

Tips

usage

啃 implies biting into something hard or tough. Figuratively, 啃书 means to study a difficult book with great effort. 啃老 means to live off one's parents (lit. 'gnaw on the elderly').

memory

The mouth radical 口 on the left shows this is about using the mouth. Think of the sound 'ken' like a crunching sound when gnawing.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Left mouth radical 口 — a small square pictograph of an open mouth, the indexing radical for verbs of eating and speaking. In 啃 it spells out the action: this is something the mouth does — gnawing, nibbling, chewing tough food. Same family: 吃 eat, 咬 bite, 嚼 chew.

phonetic

肯 kěn

willing; consent

Right 肯 supplies the sound kěn exactly. 肯 originally pictured meat (⺼) clinging to bone — 'the willing flesh' — which dovetails nicely with the gnaw-the-bone image of 啃. Pair the mouth on the left with bone-meat on the right and the character almost draws itself.