jìn
verb HSK 1 #226

Meanings

  1. 1 to enter
  2. 2 to advance

Characters

(walk) + (well) — walking toward a well.

Examples

Qǐng jìn!
Please come in!
Tā jìn le jiàoshì.
He entered the classroom.

Tips

grammar
combines with directional complements: 进去 (go in, away from speaker), 进来 (come in, toward speaker). This in/out + toward/away pattern is fundamental in Chinese.

Components

radical
chuò
walk; movement
Walking radical wrapping the lower-left — the simplified form of , two strokes for legs plus a dot for the head in motion. It marks as a verb of going, in the same family as 退 (retreat), (pursue) and (far away).
phonetic
jǐng
well
(jǐng) is the simplified swap-in for traditional (short-tailed bird), keeping a similar sound and many fewer strokes. The 1956 reformers picked it largely because jǐn/jìn are close in Mandarin. Use here purely as a sound cue — the meaning is all in the below.

Stroke Order

jìn