秉 (bǐng): to grasp

Meanings

1 to grasp
2 to hold
3 to uphold (a principle)

Characters

秉

bǐng

to grasp, to hold

Examples

他秉公办事，从不偏袒。

Tā bǐng gōng bànshì, cóngbù piāntǎn.

He acts impartially and never plays favorites.

我们秉承父亲的遗志。

Wǒmen bǐngchéng fùqīn de yízhì.

We carry on our father's wishes.

Tips

usage

秉 is literary and mostly appears in fixed compounds like 秉公 (be impartial), 秉承 (inherit/uphold), 秉持 (hold to), and 秉性 (nature). Rarely stands alone in modern speech.

memory

The character pictures a hand grasping a stalk of grain (禾) — the literal meaning is 'to hold a sheaf', extended to 'hold/uphold' anything.

Components

radical

禾 hé

grain stalk

Grain-stalk radical 禾 wraps around the hand at the centre — the indexing radical, depicting a drooping head of wheat or millet. It is the object being held: the original picture was a hand grasping a sheaf of grain, the literal harvest gesture that gave 秉 its 'hold, grasp, uphold' meaning.

semantic

彐 jì

hand (grasping form)

Middle 彐 is the schematic hand gripping the stalk — a stylised right hand reaching across the centre of the character. Pure semantic role, no sound. The hand-plus-grain combination is one of the cleanest 会意 ideographs in the script: you can literally see the harvester holding the cut sheaf.