How to Write 罄 (qìng) — Meaning “exhausted / empty”

Imagine a pottery urn (缶) being hit by a stone chime (殸) until it makes a hollow sound — that sound means the urn is empty. So you can remember 罄 as "a struck urn that is completely empty."

The top part 殸 is dense with strokes while the bottom 缶 is wider, so learners often make the bottom too big. Keep the top compact and the bottom narrower to balance the 17 strokes, and be careful not to confuse the strokes in 殸 with similar characters.

罅 (xià) means a crack or crevice, and its top part is 虖 (with a tiger radical), while 罄's top is 殸 (with a sound element). In usage, 罄 appears in words like 售罄 (sold out) for emptiness, whereas 罅 is rare and used for physical cracks, like 罅隙 (gap).

罄 is used in formal or written contexts to indicate something is completely used up, such as 售罄 (sold out) on product pages or 告罄 (supplies exhausted). A famous idiom is 罄竹难书, meaning "so many crimes that even using all bamboo slips cannot write them all," which uses 罄's sense of exhausting resources.

Common words containing 罄 include: 售罄 (shòu qìng) — Sold out; 告罄 (gào qìng) — to be sold out; to be exhausted; 罄尽 (qìng jìn) — to exhaust completely.