The character 手 (shǒu): hand

On a cream ground, a large open hand is drawn flat in coral orange, palm turned to the viewer, its five fingers spread and raised, with a few pale lines for the creases. Across the palm sits the character 手 in dark brown: a short oblique hooked onto the top of the stem, two bars crossing it of which the lower is much longer, and a stem that ends in a hook to the left.

Pronunciation: shǒu
Strokes: 4
Level: HSK2
Radical: 手

What it means

hand; (formal) to hold; person engaged in certain types of work; person skilled in certain types of work; personal(ly); convenient; classifier for skill; CL:雙|双[shuang1],隻|只[zhi1]

Where its shape comes from

A hand held up, fingers in the air and wrist at the bottom. On the bronze inscriptions the five fingers can still be counted one by one; the strokes that cut across today's character are what survives of them. Xu Shen files it among the pictures, the graphs that simply draw the thing they name.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

How it used to be written

Bronze script 西周中期
Clerical script 東漢
See all 10 forms

Forms, sources and dates: the 字形演變 database of 小學堂, Academia Sinica, public domain (CC0).

A way to remember it

The upright shaft is the forearm, and the three bars crossing it are the fingers. The lowest of the three is the longest, and the first one, right at the top, runs on a slant instead of lying flat.

This is a memory aid, not the origin of the character.

Words it appears in

手机 shǒu jī · HSK1 cell phone; mobile phone; CL:部[bu4],支[zhi1]
手表 shǒu biǎo · HSK2 wristwatch; CL:塊|块[kuai4],隻|只[zhi1],個|个[ge4]
洗手间 xǐ shǒu jiān · HSK2 toilet; lavatory; washroom
歌手 gē shǒu · HSK4 singer
手段 shǒu duàn · HSK5 method; way; means (of doing sth); skill; ability; trick; wile
对手 duì shǒu · HSK5 opponent; rival; competitor; (well-matched) adversary; match

See the 63 HSK words built on 手, grouped by level.

Writing it

See the stroke order of 手, animated stroke by stroke.