恨 (hèn): to hate; to detest

Meanings

1 to hate; to detest
2 to regret; to resent

Characters

恨

hèn

to hate; to regret

Examples

我恨自己为什么没有早点开始。

Wǒ hèn zìjǐ wèishénme méiyǒu zǎodiǎn kāishǐ.

I hate myself for not starting earlier.

她恨他骗了自己。

Tā hèn tā piàn le zìjǐ.

She hates him for deceiving her.

相爱容易相恨也容易。

Xiāng'ài róngyì xiāng hèn yě róngyì.

It's easy to love each other and easy to hate each other.

Tips

usage

恨不得 = "to wish desperately that…" - 我恨不得马上飞过去 (I desperately wish I could fly there right now).

memory

恨 has 心 (heart) on the left - hatred lives in the heart.

Components

radical

忄 xīn

heart (left-side radical form of 心)

The heart radical - the left-side compressed form of 心. Anchors 恨 in the family of feeling-words: 怕 (fear), 快 (happy), 慢 (slow), 怀 (cherish), 悔 (regret). The compressed form appears on the left of characters; the full 心 appears at the bottom of others.

phonetic

艮 gèn

still; stubborn (here phonetic + faint semantic)

Provides the sound (gěn to hèn). 艮 is the I Ching trigram for mountain - solid, immovable. The stubborn, immovable imagery resonates faintly with hatred: a feeling that won't budge. Same phonetic family as 根 (root), 跟 (heel), 银 (silver).