How to Write 杠 (gàng) — Meaning “bar; lever”

Imagine a horizontal wooden bar (木) placed across a construction site (工) to form a lever. You can picture workers using a long wooden pole to lift a heavy stone, which visually combines 木 and 工 into 杠. This image helps link the shape to its meaning as a bar or lever.

Write the left radical 木 with the vertical stroke slightly longer and the diagonal strokes meeting at the top, then add the right component 工 in three strokes: horizontal, vertical, horizontal. A common mistake is making the 工 portion too tall or misaligning its top stroke with the middle of 木—keep the two parts balanced horizontally at the same height.

杠 has the radical 木 on the left and 工 on the right, while 未 and 末 are simple single characters without a radical. Visually, 未 (wèi, 'not yet') has a shorter top horizontal stroke than 末 (mò, 'end'), but 杠 is clearly different because it contains two distinct components. In meaning, 杠 relates to physical bars, whereas 未 and 末 are abstract time or position words.

杠 appears in words like 杠杆 (gàng gǎn, 'lever' or 'financial leverage'), 单杠 (dān gàng, 'horizontal bar' in gymnastics), and 杠铃 (gàng líng, 'barbell' for weightlifting). Notably, 杠 also appears in the colloquial phrase 抬杠 (tái gàng, 'to argue stubbornly'), which comes from the image of two people carrying a pole—a cultural metaphor for opposition.

Common words containing 杠 include: 杠杆 (gàng gǎn) — lever; leverage; 单杠 (dān gàng) — horizontal bar; 杠铃 (gàng líng) — barbell.