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).

Spoken pronunciation

Definitions

  1. to tie up

Etymology & Origin

拴

pictophonetichand

Decomposition: ⿰扌全 (layout: left-right)

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
0.54952 co-occurrences
遛liù
0.51810 co-occurrences
绳shéng
0.50754 co-occurrences
栓shuān
0.49636 co-occurrences
牢láo
0.41824 co-occurrences
髓suǐ
0.41514 co-occurrences
住zhù
0.408178 co-occurrences
狗gǒu
0.39334 co-occurrences
娃wá
0.37824 co-occurrences
马mǎ
0.368136 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.

爱范儿Sep 2026

你可以把它挂在钥匙扣上,用挂绳拴在背包上,或者直接套在手腕上。

nǐ kě yǐ bǎ tā guà zài yuè chí kòu shàng , yòng guà shéng shuān zài bèi bāo shàng , huò zhě zhí jiē tào zài shǒu wàn shàng .

You can attach it to a keychain, strap it to your backpack with a lanyard, or simply slip it onto your wrist.

爱范儿Sep 2026

原本被物理介质牢牢拴在客厅电视柜上的老游戏,一下子长出了能到处跑的“数字腿”。

yuán běn bèi wù lǐ jiè zhì láo láo shuān zài kè tīng diàn shì guì shàng de lǎo yóu xì , yī xià zǐ cháng chū le néng dào chǔ pǎo de shǔ zì tuǐ .

Old games, which were once firmly tethered to the TV stand in the living room by physical media, suddenly sprouted “digital legs” that allowed them to roam freely.

少数派Jul 2026

我想你也知道那马儿背后是谁被拴住手脚被拖着满地滚。

wǒ xiǎng nǐ yě zhī dào nà mǎ ér bèi hòu shì shéi bèi shuān zhù shǒu jiǎo bèi tuō zhe mǎn dì gǔn .

I think you know who’s tied up behind that horse, being dragged along the ground.

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

Semantic Family — Characters sharing the 扌 (hand) component

Homophones — Characters pronounced shuān

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

Trace stroke sequences, hear spoken pronunciation, and build lasting retention with spaced repetition in the HanziFeed app.

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.