拴 (shuān): to tie up

拴 (shuān) is a Chinese character meaning “to tie up.” Classified as HSK Level 7-9 (HSK 3.0 Standard, CLEC 2022), it is composed of 扌 (semantic) and 全 (phonetic). It ranks #2834 in character frequency (SUBTLEX-CH corpus).

Etymologically derived, 拴 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 #2834扌 semantic全 phonetic

Definitions

  1. to tie up

Etymology & Origin

拴

pictophonetichand

Decomposition: ⿰扌全 (layout: left-right)

Components:扌semantic全phonetic

Stroke Order

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

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

Words & Compounds

Common Compounds

WordPinyinMeaning
拴住shuān zhùto tether
1
Total compounds
100
As first character
0
As last character
0
As middle character

拴 appears in 1 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 拴 in natural Chinese text, ranked by NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information) — a statistical measure of association strength.

桩zhuāng
0.557156 co-occurrences
遛liù
0.52630 co-occurrences
绳shéng
0.515162 co-occurrences
栓shuān
0.503108 co-occurrences
牢láo
0.42472 co-occurrences
髓suǐ
0.42142 co-occurrences
住zhù
0.414534 co-occurrences
狗gǒu
0.399102 co-occurrences
娃wá
0.38372 co-occurrences
马mǎ
0.373408 co-occurrences

Example Sentences

AI-Generated

拴照镜子，整理一下自己的仪容。

shuān zhào jìng zǐ , zhěng lǐ yī xià zì jǐ de yí róng .

Check your reflection in the mirror and tidy up your appearance.

Tatoeba

汤姆把线拴在了风筝上。

Tāngmǔ bǎ xiàn shuān zài le fēngzhēng shàng.

Tom attached the string to the kite.

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 shuān

栓shuān涮shuàn

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 拴 (shuān) mean in Chinese?
拴 (shuān) primarily means "to tie up." It is classified as HSK Level 7-9, making it an expert-level character. It ranks #2834 in character frequency.
What's the difference between 拴 and 下?
拴 (shuān) and 下 (xià) are often confused. antonym. The key distinguishing feature: 拴 (up) vs 下 (down).
How many strokes does 拴 have?
拴 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 拴?
The radical associated with 拴 is 扌 (hand). This radical appears in many characters related to hand.
What are the components of 拴?
拴 is composed of: 扌 (semantic), 全 (phonetic). Its IDS decomposition is ⿰扌全 with a left-right layout. Understanding the components helps with both memorization and recognizing related characters.
What are common words containing 拴?
Common words with 拴 include: 拴住 (shuān zhù, "to tether"). There are over 1 compound words containing this character.
What characters sound the same as 拴 (shuān)?
Several characters share the pronunciation shuān: 栓 (bottle stopper), 涮 (to rinse). Context and tones help distinguish between them in speech and writing.
Is 拴 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
Yes, 拴 is written the same way in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Practice writing 拴 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.