What 針 means
The needle character’s point can pierce or point the way. Shuowen, an early Chinese dictionary, distinguishes 箴, a bamboo sewing needle, from 鍼, a metal sewing needle; it treats 針 as a common form. Needle tools are prehistoric, older than writing.
Japanese 針 can also mean a policy direction. The older Chinese idiom 針鋒相投 described matching sharp remarks; 針鋒相對 means direct opposition.
Its extensions stay close to a needle’s point or direction.
The reading changes by language; Chinese, Japanese, and Korean do not share one pronunciation.
Part of the collection
Who writes 針
Loading…
Related characters
2
Combination ideas
2Questions people ask
1Why does 針 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
11
How to type or find 針
- Search it as
- 針 meaning · needle character · Japanese 針 clock hand · 針 vs 针 · 鍼 acupuncture · 針鋒相對 meaning · 一針見血 meaning
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
針\91DDCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.