How to Write 泔 (gān) — Meaning “Slop; swill”

Picture a bucket of leftover soup (氵) that has a strange sweet smell (甘) because someone dropped a piece of candy into it. This visual of "sweet liquid waste" helps you connect the water radical with the sound and meaning of 甘. Keep in mind that 甘 alone means "sweet," so the whole character suggests something liquid that is sweet in a rotten way.

Start with the water radical: write three dots from left to right. Then add the right side 甘: first a horizontal stroke, then a vertical stroke down the middle, two short horizontals inside, and finally a long bottom horizontal. A common mistake is making the right side too tall or writing the vertical line of 甘 off-center, which makes the character look unbalanced.

The right side of 泔 is 甘 (sweet), while 㳄 has 欠 (lack/yawn) and means "saliva," and 汊 has 叉 (fork) and means "a branch of a river." In usage, 泔 is only used for kitchen waste, 汊 appears in geography words like 河汊 (river branch), and 㳄 is very rare and literary. Visually, remember 泔 = water + sweet, not water + fork or water + yawn.

泔 is almost always used in the compound 泔水 (gān shuǐ), which means kitchen waste or swill, and its related word 泔水桶 (gān shuǐ tǒng, slop bucket). You will hear it in everyday contexts like restaurants separating 泔水 for pig feed, but it never appears in formal writing or high-level HSK vocabulary. It is a practical, unglamorous character tied to a specific kind of waste.

Common words containing 泔 include: 泔水 (gān shuǐ) — Kitchen waste; swill; 泔水桶 (gān shuǐ tǒng) — Slop bucket; swill bucket; 泔脚 (gān jiǎo) — Kitchen waste; slops.