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坎

Mandarin · pinyin kǎn

pit
threshold
one of the Eight Trigrams 八卦 bā guà, symbolizing water
☵

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坎: kǎn · pit, hole; snare, trap; crisis; trigram ☵; hexagram ䷜

Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

3 · kan3

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1character link18same-tone records1source reference

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Read this spelling in Classical texts

Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 8 senses · 3 Cantonese readings

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

ham1 · ham2 · ham3

Cantonese word readings for 坎. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

character · Etymology 1

(literary) pit; hole
bank or ridge between fields
critical juncture (Classifier: 道 m)
6th of the 8 trigrams (☵)
29th hexagram of the I Ching (䷜)
(abbreviation, alt-of) short for 坎德拉 (kǎndélā)
a surname

character · Etymology 2

(Cantonese, mahjong) three tiles; set of pung or chow

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

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