间 (jiàn): gap; interval; crack

Meanings

1 gap; interval; crack
2 to separate; to keep apart
3 to drive apart; to sow discord

Characters

间

jiàn

gap; interval; crack

Examples

把秧苗间开五十厘米。

Bǎ yāngmiáo jiàn kāi wǔshí límǐ.

Plant the seedlings at a spacing of fifty centimeters.

他想离间我们两个人，但是没成功。

Tā xiǎng líjiàn wǒmen liǎng gè rén, dànshì méi chénggōng.

He tried to sow discord between the two of us, but did not succeed.

间谍常常隐藏在众目睽睽之下。

Jiàndié chángcháng yǐncáng zài zhòngmùkuíkuí zhīxià.

Spies often hide in plain sight.

Tips

history

The jiàn reading is the older meaning. The traditional form 間 pictured moonlight, and later sunlight, falling through a chink between two doors — literally a 'gap.' From that concrete gap came the verb senses: to put a gap between things (separate), and to push a gap into a relationship (drive apart, sow discord). The jiān reading 'between / room / interval' is a later tone-shift specialization for the spatial sense.

register

Standalone 间 as a verb ('to thin out, to space apart') is literary and farming-technical — you will mostly meet this reading bound inside compounds: 间隔 (interval), 间隙 (gap), 间谍 (spy), 间断 (interrupted), 间接 (indirect), 间歇 (intermittent), 离间 (drive a wedge), 反间计 (counter-espionage stratagem).

Components

radical

门 mén

door; gate (radical)

Outer door/gate radical (Kangxi #169) — simplified from 門, originally a pair of swing-doors. Surrounds 间 from above and the sides. Carries the visual core: the character pictures a slit between the two doors, hence 'between, interval, room.' The same radical anchors 问 (ask), 闻 (hear), 闹 (noisy), 闪 (flash) — things that happen at, through, or behind a doorway.

semantic

日 rì

sun (semantic)

Inner sun component — pictograph of the sun with a central stroke. The compound reads: sunlight through the crack between two doors = gap, interval, moment between. Originally written 閒 with 月 'moon' (moonlight in the doorway); the 日-version 間 became standard and was later simplified to 间. Used as a measure word for rooms because each room is a partitioned interval.