攀 (pān): to climb

Meanings

1 to climb
2 to cling to
3 to seek connections with (someone of higher status)

Characters

攀

pān

climb; pull oneself up

Examples

HSK 6

不要总想着攀高枝。

Bùyào zǒng xiǎng zhe pān gāozhī.

Do not always try to climb the social ladder.

HSK 7-9

他攀上了山顶。

Tā pān shàng le shāndǐng.

He climbed to the top of the mountain.

Tips

usage

攀 has both a physical meaning (to climb by pulling oneself up) and a social meaning (to seek connections with people of higher status). 攀比 (to compare oneself with others), 攀登 (to climb/scale), 攀亲 (to claim kinship) are common compounds.

memory

The character 攀 shows two 木 (trees) with hands - pulling yourself up between trees = climbing.

Components

radical

手 shǒu

hand

Bottom hand - the full standalone form of 手 rather than the side variant 扌, sitting beneath the rest of the character. Reinforces the manual nature of climbing: 攀 always involves the hands gripping, pulling, and hoisting the body upward, as in 攀登 to climb and 攀岩 to rock-climb.

phonetic

樊 fán

fence; cage

Top 樊 - two hands grasping a wooden lattice, originally a fence or thorny enclosure. Supplies the sound fán drifting to pān, and feeds the meaning visually: hands gripping the lattice are exactly the climbing posture. With 手 below, the whole is hand-over-hand ascent.