noun #13,186

Measure Word

Meanings

  1. 1 axe
  2. 2 hatchet

Examples

HSK 7-9
Tā yòng fǔtou pī chái.
He chops firewood with an axe.

Tips

usage
As a standalone character is literary. In everyday speech, 斧头 or 斧子 is more common.

Components

radical
jīn
axe; weight unit (catty)
Bottom - pictograph of an axe-head on a handle, later borrowed for the weight unit (one catty, about 500g). The indexing radical, putting firmly in the chopping-tool family with , , . Father + axe gives the literal "patriarch's axe" - the household chopping tool.
phonetic
father
Top supplies the sound - fù drifting to fǔ with a tone shift. itself depicts a hand holding a stone axe - the patriarch wielding a tool - so it also carries a faint semantic memory of the axe meaning. Same phonetic appears in cauldron.

Stroke Order