What 緝 means
It means making thread, gathering, hemming, or pursuing and seizing.
An Eastern Han Chinese dictionary, the Shuowen Jiezi, describes 緝 as separating hemp into fibers and twisting them into thread. Later dictionaries also record joining or gathering, sewing a garment edge, and searching for and seizing a fugitive. These are branches of an old thread-making and gathering sense.
Why can 緝 mean arrest?
Arrest is one compound sense, not the character’s only meaning.
通緝 refers to pursuing someone under a wanted notice, while 緝凶 means pursuing a criminal. 緝邊 means sewing an edge, and 緝熙 is a classical phrase for brightness. The following word selects the branch.
Register shifts with the compound: formal legal language for pursuit, textile terminology for sewing, and classical diction in 緝熙.
By itself, 緝 does not tell you whether the text means sewing, gathering, brightness, or arrest.
Who writes 緝
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What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsAmbiguous: context may point to thread, gathering, brightness, or arrest.
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
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Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Can Japanese readers read 緝 as つむぐ?
Yes. Japanese dictionaries list つむぐ for drawing out fibers and making thread; they also give しゅう, a Japanese reading borrowed from Chinese.
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How to type or find 緝
- Also called
- 缉
- Search it as
- 通緝 · 緝凶 · 緝邊 · meaning of 緝 · つむぐ
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
緝\7DDDCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.