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枪杀 (qiāng shā) — to shoot and kill, to gun down

Definition

verb
to shoot and killto gun down

Examples

  • 枪杀。
    Tā qù nián zài jiē tóu bèi rén qiāng shā le.
    He was gunned down on the street last year.
  • 枪杀。
    Jǐng fāng zhèng zài diào chá zhè qǐ qiāng shā àn.
    The police are investigating this shooting murder case.
  • ，枪杀。
    Zhàn zhēng qī jiān, xǔ duō wú gū píng mín zāo dào qiāng shā.
    During the war, many innocent civilians were shot dead.

Origin

Compound word
构词法gòucífǎ
偏正piānzhèngModifier + head

The first part narrows down the second: it says what kind of thing the head is.

枪qiānggun
杀shākill

枪 means gun, 杀 means kill; together they mean kill with a gun.

Characters in this word

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 槍; 枪 is its simplified writing.

Meaning part形符xíngfú
木木mù
Sound part声符shēngfú
倉
倉cāng槍qiāng
The sound has drifted apartThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

The traditional form 槍 pairs 木 (wood) with 倉 as a sound part; the simplified 枪 is a shorthand, and its right side is not the historical component.

Open 枪 →

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 殺; 杀 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 殺 comes from an old drawing of a boar impaled in the head, with 人 and 又 added to show a person doing the killing; the simplified 杀 is a later abbreviation.

Open 杀 →
Appears in
Crime & Police5000 Most Frequent Chinese Words

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