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Frequencyvery common; among the most frequently used few hundred characters in modern Chinese
干 is one of the trickiest simplified characters because it stands in for three separate traditional characters: 干 itself (meaning shield, or to interfere/offend), 乾 (dry), and 幹 (trunk, main stem, or to do/work). Learners meet it constantly in words like 干净 (clean), 干杯 (cheers), and 干什么 (what are you doing). In traditional text you'll see 乾 or 幹 instead, depending on the meaning intended.
Mandaringān · ㄍㄢ
Cantonesegon1 · gōn
A second reading gàn (Jyutping gon3, Yale gon) is used for the 'to do/work' and 'trunk, main stem' senses, corresponding to traditional 幹. The 'dry' sense (traditional 乾) is read gān/gon1 in modern Mandarin and Cantonese, but note 乾 has an unrelated second reading qián used in the Yijing trigram name and words like 乾坤.
verbto do, to work, to be engaged in (gàn; traditional 幹)
nountrunk, main stem, or the main part of something (gàn; traditional 幹), as in 树干 tree trunk
verbto interfere with, to offend, to have to do with (original meaning of 干), as in 相干, 干涉
nounshield; a weapon-like forked pole (archaic/original meaning)
Other pronunciations
gàn · gon3 to do, to work; trunk or main stem (simplified form of 幹); also 'cadre' as in 干部
How it is built
pictograph
Radical 干. shield / dry stem (its own Kangxi radical, number 51).
干meaning The whole character is a single pictograph; it is not composed of separate meaningful parts.
Origin
The oracle-bone and bronze forms of 干 show a forked stick or pole, generally understood to depict a simple weapon or shield used in ancient combat — hence old compounds like 干戈 ('shields and spears', i.e. warfare). From 'shield/weapon used to ward off' the meaning extended to 'to offend, to interfere with' (干犯, 干涉). The character was later borrowed phonetically to write the unrelated word 'dry', which had its own character 乾. In 20th-century script simplification, 幹 (trunk, to do) and 乾 (dry) were both merged into 干 for most uses, though 乾 is kept in traditional writing and in the name of the Yijing trigram (乾坤).
Remembering it
Picture the three strokes as a simple forked pole stuck in the ground — a rough weapon or a bare, dried-out stick. That bare, leafless-stick image covers both the old 'shield/pole' sense and the borrowed 'dry' sense.
Because simplified script merged 乾 (dry) and 幹 (trunk/to do) into 干, the same character can mean quite different things depending on context and reading — gān for 'dry/shield-related' senses, gàn for 'to do/trunk' senses. Traditional-script readers will see 乾淨 vs 幹活 clearly distinguished, but simplified-script readers must infer meaning from context. Note also that 乾 has an unrelated reading qián (as in 乾坤, the cosmic principles of heaven and earth) that has nothing to do with 'dry' or with the simplified 干.
Context
干 appears in 干支 (gānzhī), the 'Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches' system used for centuries in the Chinese calendar, astrology, and dating years (as in the sexagenary cycle) — one of the more historically significant uses of the character outside its everyday meanings.
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