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Character
金
Strokes8
Radical金
HSK3
FrequencyVery common — generally within the 400 most frequent characters, and extremely frequent as a radical.
金 means gold, and by extension metal in general and money. Learners meet it early in words like 現金/现金 (cash), 黃金/黄金 (gold) and 金融 (finance), and again as the radical on the left of hundreds of metal-related characters (銀/银, 鐵/铁, 錢/钱), where it is written 釒/钅. It is also one of the five phases (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) and a common surname, read Kim in Korean.
Mandarinjīn · ㄐㄧㄣ
Cantonesegam1 · gām
One reading only in both languages; no tone sandhi.
nounmetal in general; metals collectively (as in 五金 hardware)
nounmoney; funds (資金/资金, 獎金/奖金)
adjectivegolden; gold-coloured; precious
nounmetal, one of the Five Phases (五行)
proper nouna surname; also the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) of the Jurchen
How it is built
phono-semantic
Radical 金. metal, gold.
今sound gives the reading jīn / gam1; visible as the roof-and-stroke at the top
土meaning earth or ground — metal ore comes out of the earth
丷 (two dots)meaning usually read as lumps of ore or metal nuggets in the ground
Origin
金 does not appear in the oracle bones in a settled form; it becomes common in bronze inscriptions of the Zhou period, where it typically shows 今 on top as the phonetic together with an earth element and two short marks flanking it. The standard reading of those marks is that they are nuggets or ingots of ore in the ground, which suits a word first used of bronze and only later narrowed to gold. Some scholars instead see the lower part as a depiction of a mould or an axe-like metal object; the details of the original picture are disputed, though the 今 phonetic is not.
Remembering it
今 (now) sitting on 土 (earth) with two nuggets beside it: right now, dig some metal out of the ground. As a left-hand radical it squeezes to 釒 (traditional) or 钅 (simplified) — see it and expect a metal: 銀/银, 鐵/铁, 銅/铜.
金 alone rarely means 'gold' in modern speech; say 金子 (jīnzi) for the substance or 黃金/黄金 for gold as a commodity. As a suffix it very often means 'a sum of money': 獎金/奖金 bonus, 押金 deposit, 罰款金/basic 罰金 fine, 退休金 pension. In Cantonese 金 gam1 works the same way, and 金 also appears in everyday Hong Kong words like 金鋪 (gam1 pou3, gold shop) and 現金 (jin6 gam1). As a radical it is written 釒 in traditional and 钅 in simplified — the character standing alone is 金 in both scripts.
Context
金 is one of the Five Phases (五行), paired with the west, autumn and the colour white in that system. It is a very common element in personal names, promising wealth, and 鑫 (three 金) is popular in shop and company names. The Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) took 金 as its dynastic name, and the Korean surname Kim is the same character.
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This page was written by an AI language model and may contain errors, particularly in etymology. Check anything you plan to rely on.
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