挎 (kuà): to carry (esp. slung over the arm, shoulder or side)

挎 (kuà) is a Chinese character meaning “to carry (esp. slung over the arm, shoulder or side).” Classified as HSK Level 7-9 (HSK 3.0 Standard, CLEC 2022), it is composed of 扌 (semantic) and 夸 (phonetic). It ranks #2981 in character frequency (SUBTLEX-CH corpus).

Etymologically derived, 挎 hand. Its radical form 扌 (hand) appears in many related characters such as 手 (shǒu, hand), 打 (dǎ, hit, make), 找 (zhǎo, to look for).

Native pronunciation
HSK 7-9Radical: 扌 hand9 strokesFrequency #2981扌 semantic夸 phonetic

Definitions

  1. to carry (esp. slung over the arm, shoulder or side)

Etymology & Origin

挎

pictophonetichand

Decomposition: ⿰扌夸 (layout: left-right)

Components:扌semantic夸phonetic

Stroke Order

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Practice writing 挎 with real-time feedback — trace each stroke in the correct order and build muscle memory in the HanziFeed app.

Words & Compounds

Common Compounds

WordPinyinMeaning
挎包kuà bāosatchel
挎兜儿kuà dōu rerhua variant of 挎兜[kua4 dou1]
挎斗kuà dǒusidecar
挎兜kuà dōusatchel
4
Total compounds
100
As first character
0
As last character
0
As middle character

挎 appears in 4 compound words: 100 as the first character, 0 as the last, and 0 in a middle position. Compound statistics computed from SUBTLEX-CH and HSK 3.0 vocabulary data.

Strongest Collocations

Characters that most frequently co-occur with 挎 in natural Chinese text, ranked by NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information) — a statistical measure of association strength.

斜xié
0.537234 co-occurrences
肩jiān
0.43342 co-occurrences
枪qiāng
0.40248 co-occurrences
弹dàn
0.39760 co-occurrences
斗dǒu
0.39172 co-occurrences
包bāo
0.389252 co-occurrences
着zhe
0.387114 co-occurrences
摩mó
0.35948 co-occurrences
鼓gǔ
0.35230 co-occurrences
托tuō
0.33648 co-occurrences

Example Sentences

AI-Generated

请挎出你的证件，配合我们的工作。

qǐng kuà chū nǐ de zhèng jiàn , pèi gě wǒ men de gōng zuò .

Please present your identification and cooperate with our work.

Character Family

扌 Radical Family — Characters sharing the hand radical

挨āi按àn扒bā拔bá把bǎ摆bǎi扳bān搬bān扮bàn拌bàn

Related Characters

手shǒu打dǎ找zhǎo拿ná才cái护hù报bào拉lā挺tǐng换huàn

Homophones — Characters pronounced kuà

垮kuǎ跨kuà夸kuā

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 挎 (kuà) mean in Chinese?
挎 (kuà) primarily means "to carry (esp. slung over the arm, shoulder or side)." It is classified as HSK Level 7-9, making it an expert-level character. It ranks #2981 in character frequency.
How many strokes does 挎 have?
挎 is written with 9 strokes. The correct stroke order matters for recognition and handwriting speed — practice with the animated guide above to build proper technique.
What is the radical of 挎?
The radical associated with 挎 is 扌 (hand). This radical appears in many characters related to hand.
What are the components of 挎?
挎 is composed of: 扌 (semantic), 夸 (phonetic). Its IDS decomposition is ⿰扌夸 with a left-right layout. Understanding the components helps with both memorization and recognizing related characters.
What are common words containing 挎?
Common words with 挎 include: 挎包 (kuà bāo, "satchel"); 挎兜儿 (kuà dōu r, "erhua variant of 挎兜[kua4 dou1]"); 挎斗 (kuà dǒu, "sidecar"); 挎兜 (kuà dōu, "satchel"). There are over 4 compound words containing this character.
What characters sound the same as 挎 (kuà)?
Several characters share the pronunciation kuà: 垮 (to collapse (lit. or fig.)), 跨 (to stride, to cross), 夸 (to boast). Context and tones help distinguish between them in speech and writing.
Is 挎 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
Yes, 挎 is written the same way in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Practice writing 挎 with real-time feedback

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Character data sourced from Unihan (Unicode Consortium), SUBTLEX-CH frequency corpus (Cai & Brysbaert, 2010), and Make Me a Hanzi (stroke data). Collocation strength measured via NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information). Verified by the HanziFeed linguistics team.

HSK classification follows the HSK 3.0 Standard (Center for Language Education and Cooperation, CLEC, 2022 revision). Idiom data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Data last verified: March 2026.