chán
adjective

Meanings

  1. 1 cunning; crafty (archaic)
  2. 2 a swift, wily hare (classical)

Examples

Chán zì zuòwéi shēngpáng bǎoliú zài chán zì lǐ.
This character 毚 'cunning hare' survives as the phonetic in 谗 'to slander'.

Tips

history
is not used independently in modern Chinese. It survives almost entirely as the phonetic element in (to slander), (greedy / gluttonous), and (to support by the arm; to mix in). It originally pictured a wily, fast hare.
register
Archaic and literary only; today seen only in etymology notes and as the shared phonetic of its character family, not in speech.

Components

ideograph
chán
cunning hare
Treated as one unit: it stacks an archaic clawed-animal graph over (hare) to depict a swift, cunning hare. The upper element no longer functions as an independent teaching component, so the whole is read as a single fused phonetic graph.

Filed under radical (bǐ) by convention. is not a separate component in , so no strokes are highlighted.

Stroke Order

chán