髋 (kuān): hip

Meanings

1 hip
2 pelvis

Characters

髋

kuān

hip; pelvis

Examples

HSK 7-9

老年人髋部骨折的风险较高。

Lǎoniánrén kuān bù gǔzhé de fēngxiǎn jiào gāo.

Elderly people have a higher risk of hip fractures.

HSK 7-9

这个舞蹈动作需要髋关节有足够的灵活性。

Zhège wǔdǎo dòngzuò xūyào kuānguānjié yǒu zúgòu de línghuóxìng.

This dance move requires sufficient flexibility in the hip joint.

Tips

memory

The character 髋 contains 骨 (bone) on the left, hinting at its anatomical meaning. 髋关节 means 'hip joint', and 髋骨 means 'hip bone'.

Components

radical

骨 gǔ

bone

Left bone radical 骨 is a skull-and-jaw graph topped by joint sockets, with a 月-style flesh hook at the base. It indexes 髋 in the skeletal-anatomy family (骸 skeleton, 骷 skull, 髓 marrow) and pins the word to the bone of the hip rather than the soft tissue.

phonetic

宽 kuān

wide; broad

Right 宽 supplies the sound kuān directly with no shift, and pulls double duty as a semantic hint: the hip is the widest bone in the body, the broadly flared pelvis. So 髋 reads almost transparently as 'wide bone', a rare phono-semantic where both halves work in plain sight.