鹍
usually seen in: pipa strings, made from sinews of large crane or swan 鵾雞|鹍鸡[kun1 ji1] (鹍弦); bird mentioned in ancient texts, resembling a crane (鹍鸡)
Closest English meanings
large bird·mythic bird·kun bird
The Calligrapher — Zhāng Zhī 张芝
Han 'Sage of Cursive', father of the connected-cursive style.
Han calligrapher (?–192), master of cursive script/clerical cursive — Han dynasty 'Cursive Sage' who turned rapid writing into an art form centuries before cursive peaked. Han dynasty
Cultural Story
鹍 names a large, mythic bird, a phono-semantic compound from the bird radical with the sound 昆. Paired as 鹍鸡 (a giant fowl) and 鹍鹏 (kun and peng), it echoes Zhuangzi's 鲲鹏, the leviathan-bird of boundless flight. Chu-ci poetry invokes 鹍 to evoke vast, soaring freedom beyond the mortal world.
Common words & phrases
- 鹍鸡 large bird · kun chicken
- 鹍鹏 kun and peng · mythic birds
Read the story behind the character
Though rare in speech, 鹍 survives in 鹍鸡 (large bird) and 鹍鹏 (kun and peng, mythic birds) within classical quotations and fantasy games. Writers borrow 鹍鹏 for ambition campaigns and martial-arts titles, keeping alive a bird so huge it shades the sky in Zhuangzi's restless imagination.
Own this character
Purchase delivers the original SVG of this glyph, brushed by Zhāng Zhī 张芝, ready to place on skin, paper, or screen.