挂 (guà): to hang; to hang up

Meanings

1 to hang; to hang up
2 to hang up (the phone)
3 to register (at a hospital)

Characters

挂

guà

to hang; to hang up (phone)

Contains 扌 (hand radical) — you use your hand to hang something up.

Examples

墙上挂着一幅画。

Qiáng shàng guà zhe yī fú huà.

A painting is hanging on the wall.

他把电话挂了。

Tā bǎ diànhuà guà le.

He hung up the phone.

先去挂号再看医生。

Xiān qù guàhào zài kàn yīshēng.

First register, then see the doctor.

请把衣服挂起来。

Qǐng bǎ yīfu guà qǐlái.

Please hang up the clothes.

Tips

usage

挂号 means to register at a hospital — you must do this before seeing a doctor in China. It also means 'registered mail.'

grammar

挂着 uses the 着 aspect to describe a sustained state: 墙上挂着画 (a painting is hanging on the wall).

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand (radical form)

Left hand radical — simplified 3-stroke form of 手. The indexing radical. Hanging something on a hook is a manual placing action, so the radical is literal. Same radical heads 拿, 抓, 推, 拉 — the hand-driven verb family.

phonetic

圭 guī

jade tablet (phonetic)

Right component supplies the sound (guī → guà, a regular Old Chinese tone-and-final shift in the velar-vowel family). 圭 itself is two stacked 土 'earth' — a pictograph of a long jade tablet that nobles held during audiences with the emperor. The tablets were displayed by being hung on stands, so faint semantic echo too. Same phonetic in 街 (street), 佳 (excellent), 桂 (cassia/Guangxi).