棘
Tap the pinyin to hear it
thorns
- HSK 3.0
- Level 7–9
- Strokes
- 12
- Radical
- 木 +8
- Structure
- Left–right 左右
- Traditional
- 棘
- Common rank
- #3,090
- Unicode
- U+68D8
Sound it out + =
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
How 棘 is formed
Phono-semantic compound (形声字)
朿 meaning “thorn” + 朿 sound ()
Components 朿 ×2
How to remember it
thorn bushes · Heisig RSH #1690
thorn
Keyword method from Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi.
Words with 棘
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 棘皮动物 | echinoderm, the phylum containing sea urchins, sea cucumbers etc | |
| 棘鼻青岛龙 | Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus, a 10 meter long hadrosaur with a single horn on its duck-billed… | |
| 棘手 | thorny (problem); intractable | |
| 腔棘鱼 | coelacanth | |
| 沙棘 | (botany) sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) | |
| 棘轮 | ratchet | |
| 荆棘载途 | lit. a path covered in brambles; a course of action beset by difficulties (idiom) | |
| 食荼卧棘 | to eat bitter fruit and lie on thorns (idiom); to share the hard life of the common people | |
| 棘楚 | thorny problem; troublesome affair | |
| 披荆斩棘 | lit. to cut one's way through thistles and thorns (idiom); fig. to overcome all obstacles … | |
| 荆棘 | thistles and thorns; brambles; thorny undergrowth |
Sound family
Characters sharing the sound component 朿 — compare how they read.