How to Write 捃 (jùn) — Meaning “to collect; to gather”

Imagine a lord (君) using his hand (扌) to collect all his treasures from the floor. The visual of a noble bending down to pick up scattered items can help you remember that 捃 means “to collect” or “to gather.” Focus on the hand and the lord working together.

The left side (扌) should be narrow and the right side (君) wider. A common mistake is making the hand radical too large or misplacing the horizontal stroke in 君: the top horizontal line of 君 should be shorter than the bottom one. Write the hand radical first, then the right side with balanced proportions.

捃 (jùn) means to collect or gather, while 抨 (pēng) means to criticize or attack verbally—it has a different pronunciation and meaning. 㧜 is an extremely rare character (䙲 radical?) that is not used in modern Chinese, so you will almost never encounter it. The main difference is that 捃 is about picking up items, not about hitting or speaking.

捃 is a literary character rarely used in everyday conversation; it appears mostly in formal or classical texts, such as historical writings. You might see it in phrases like 捃拾 (to collect scattered items) or 捃摭 (to pick up, often in a figurative sense of gathering information). Knowing it helps when reading classical Chinese or advanced literature, but it is not needed for basic HSK levels.

Common words containing 捃 include: 捃拾 (jùn shí) — to collect; to gather up; 捃摭 (jùn zhí) — to collect; to pick up (literary); 捃采 (jùn cǎi) — to collect; to gather (materials).