What 柬 means
It means “letter” or “invitation”; older texts also use it for “select.”
The earliest form located here is bronze script from around 1000 BC; later evidence includes Warring States Chu bamboo-slip writing and a Shuowen seal-script form around 100 AD.
Early Chinese analysis explains the graph as separating or selecting from a bundle (束). The letter and invitation senses belong to modern compounds such as 请柬 and 书柬, while Cambodia always needs the full 柬埔寨.
Read the whole word before choosing a gloss
If you meet 柬 alone, let the sentence decide between a document sense and the older “select” sense. Copy it from the palette above, then check the neighboring characters: 柬埔寨 names Cambodia, while 请柬 and 书柬 name written documents.
That is why a one-character translation can mislead. The same shape can be a country-name element, an invitation word, or an older literary verb.
Letter-related uses feel formal or literary; in 柬埔寨, the character is simply part of a country name.
Do not translate 柬 as Cambodia unless 柬埔寨 is present.
Who writes 柬
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What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsMay mean “select” or “distinguish”; use the sentence, not the glyph, to decide.
Don't confuse it with
2柬 vs 東 柬 has different inner and lower strokes; 東 is the separate character for “east.”
柬 vs 简 简 is simplified 簡; check the lower strokes, since 柬 keeps its own inner marks.
Related characters
3
Questions people ask
1Is 柬 the same as 简?
No. 简 is the simplified form of 簡; 柬 is a separate character. They overlap in letter-related usage, but one is not the other’s simplified spelling.
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How to type or find 柬
- Search it as
- jian · jian3 · jiǎn · invitation · letter · note · cambodia · qingjian
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
柬\67ECCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.