軸 specifically emphasizes a central rotating or organizing axis.

Related characters:


wheel, circular object, rotation, cycle, round

cart, vehicle, wagon, wheele

heart, mind, center, core

seed, kernel, core, nucleus

A phono-semantic compound consisting of:


 (cart / vehicle) — semantic component, indicates relation to wheels or carts;


to arise from, cause

 — phonetic component supplying the sound (축 / zhóu).
The character originally referred to the central rod that holds wheels on a cart.

Semantic development:
- axle of a cart;
- central rod or pivot;
- axis in geometry or mechanics;
- core or central element.
The idea of a physical axle naturally extended to abstract central structures.

In Korean, 軸 is widely used in scientific and technical terminology.

중축 (中軸) — central axis
회전축 (回轉軸) — rotation axis
지축 (地軸) — Earth’s axis

Characters

Words

Vocabulary

Rare and archaic Chinese character

thunderous sound, repeated crashing of thunder

adult male, fourth Heavenly Stem, nail

seven, number 7, seventh

elder, man of respect, husband, head of a family

up, top, first, best

below, under, to descend, to go down

not, no, non-

world, generation, lifetime

unit, individual, single

center, middle, inside

to grasp, to hold, to seize

to string together, to pierce through, a skewer, a series or chain of things

a small round object, pellet, ball, pill

red, cinnabar-red

king, lord, master, sovereign

thus, then, only, surprisingly

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Chinese character

Explore 214 Chinese radicals and their derived characters. Sort by radical or stroke count, and view the complete list of official Hanja radicals.

Chinese characters (Hanja)

Chinese characters dictionary

軸

Etymology

Usage in Korean

Additional notes

Neighboring characters in the dictionary