笺 (jiān): letter paper

Measure Word

一张笺 zhāng

Meanings

1 letter paper
2 writing paper
3 annotation
4 short note

Characters

笺

jiān

letter paper; annotation

Examples

HSK 4

她在花笺上写了一首诗。

Tā zài huā jiān shàng xiě le yī shǒu shī.

She wrote a poem on flower-patterned letter paper.

HSK 7-9

古人常用彩笺传情。

Gǔrén cháng yòng cǎi jiān chuánqíng.

Ancient people often used colored letter paper to convey their feelings.

Tips

culture

笺 carries elegant, literary connotations - it appears in compounds like 信笺 'letter paper', 花笺 'patterned writing paper', and 便笺 'memo / sticky note'. The Tang-Song poet Xue Tao (薛涛) is famous for inventing 薛涛笺, a small crimson letter paper still imitated today.

usage

Also functions as a verb in classical contexts meaning 'to annotate', as in 笺注, commentary added to a classical text - closely linked to scholarly traditions of textual exegesis.

Components

radical

⺮ zhú

bamboo (top radical of 竹)

Top bamboo radical, the compressed cap form of 竹. Indexes 笺 in the bamboo-writing family alongside 筹 tally, 簿 register, 籍 records. A 笺 was originally a thin strip of bamboo used as a writing slip, by extension a small sheet of notepaper or annotation.

phonetic

戋 jiān

small; petty

Bottom 戋 supplies the sound directly - jiān to jiān, identical. It also adds semantic flavour: small, meagre, slight - fitting a tiny strip of bamboo or a thin sheet of notepaper. The simplified 笺 replaces the traditional 箋 with this much shorter element.