Definitions
blunt; tough; chewy
one of the Eight Trigrams 八卦[bā guà], symbolizing mountain; ☶; ancient Chinese compass point: 45° (northeast)
Etymology
Depicts a person looking backwards. Based on the original meaning "look backwards". The modern meaning is a phonetic loan.
About
The character "艮" originated from a pictographic depiction of a person turning their head backward, conveying notions of hesitation or cessation, which established its early associations with stopping, hardness, and obstinacy in classical texts. Structurally, it remains an indivisible unit in modern writing, often acting as a phonetic and semantic component in compounded characters. Over centuries, its semantic range condensed, and it is now primarily identified as the mountain trigram in the I Ching, while also carrying a dialectal sense describing a blunt or straightforward disposition.
Etymology Hide
