赃 (zāng): stolen goods

Meanings

1 stolen goods
2 loot
3 spoils of crime
4 booty

Characters

赃

zāng

stolen goods; loot

Examples

警察查获了大量赃款赃物。

Jǐngchá cháhuò le dàliàng zāngkuǎn zāngwù.

The police seized large amounts of stolen money and goods.

他被当场抓住，人赃俱获。

Tā bèi dāngchǎng zhuāzhù, rénzāngjùhuò.

He was caught on the spot — caught red-handed with the stolen goods.

Tips

usage

赃 appears in key legal/criminal vocabulary: 赃款 (stolen money), 赃物 (stolen property), 分赃 (to divide loot), and the idiom 人赃俱获 (caught red-handed with the goods).

Components

radical

贝 bèi

cowrie shell; treasure

Cowrie-shell radical on the left — ancient currency. Indexes 赃 in the wealth family with 财 wealth, 贿 bribe, 贪 greedy. Marks the character as money-related; combined with the right side, the meaning narrows to wealth obtained wrongly: loot, plunder, the proceeds of crime.

phonetic

庄 zhuāng

village; solemn

Right side 庄 supplies the sound, drifting from zhuāng to zāng with both initial and tone shift. In the simplified system this replaced the older phonetic 臧 (good, hidden) — note that traditional 贓 keeps 臧, whose "hidden" sense suited stolen treasure better than 庄 does.