禽 (qín): birds; fowl

Meanings

1 birds; fowl
2 birds and animals
3 old variant of 擒 'to capture'

Characters

禽

qín

birds; fowl

Examples

HSK 5

他做的事简直禽兽不如。

Tā zuò de shì jiǎnzhí qínshòu bùrú.

What he did is worse than the beasts (lit. 'inferior even to birds and animals').

HSK 7-9

家禽是指鸡、鸭、鹅这些被人饲养的鸟类。

Jiāqín shì zhǐ jī, yā, é zhèxiē bèi rén sìyǎng de niǎolèi.

'Domestic fowl' (jiaqin) refers to chickens, ducks, geese and other birds that humans raise.

Tips

usage

Mostly seen as a bound morpheme in compounds rather than as a standalone word: 家禽 ('poultry / domestic fowl'), 飞禽 ('flying birds'), 禽流感 ('avian flu'), 禽兽 ('beasts', used as an insult). The classical sense was broader: in Pre-Qin texts, 禽 could mean both birds and four-legged animals together, before narrowing to 'birds' in modern usage.

memory

禽兽不如 ('inferior to birds and beasts') is one of the strongest non-vulgar insults in Chinese. It accuses someone of having less moral worth than animals.

Components

radical

离 lí

to depart; mythical bird (here graphic)

Bottom 离, the netted prey. The indexing Kangxi radical of 禽 is actually 禸 (the small footprint inside), the animal-track radical. The whole bottom reads as the bird trapped in the net, source of the 'fowl, captured creature' meaning.

semantic

人 rén

person (here a covering shape)

Top 人, two strokes forming a peaked roof shape. Originally 禽 pictured a long-handled net for catching birds, and this top piece is the curved handle of the net. The 'person' reading is a modern visual match, with no human in the etymology, just a net-frame.