穫

You're viewing the source. Log in to edit.

{| style="border: 2px solid #4A5D23; width: min(100%, 380px); float: left;"
|-
| colspan="4" style="text-align: center; font-size: 5em; padding: 26px 0; line-height: 1; color: #4A5D23;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | 穫
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Meaning
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | to harvest; to reap
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Radical
| style="padding: 6px 10px; width: 23%; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | 禾 + 14
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Strokes
| style="padding: 6px 10px; width: 23%; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | 19
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Composition
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | ⿰禾蒦
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Formation
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Phono-semantic
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Unicode
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | U+7A6B
|-
| colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Mandarin ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}}
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Pinyin
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | huò
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Zhuyin
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | ㄏㄨㄛˋ
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Simplified
| style="padding: 6px 10px; width: 23%;" | 获
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Strokes
| style="padding: 6px 10px; width: 23%;" | 10
{{Endcollapse}}
|-
| colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Cantonese ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}}
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Jyutping
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | wok6
{{Endcollapse}}
|-
| colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Japanese ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}}
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | On'yomi
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | カク (kaku)
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Level
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | Jōyō
{{Endcollapse}}
|-
| colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Korean ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}}
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Reading
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | 확 (hwak)
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Eumhun
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | 거둘 (geodul) 확 — "to gather in"
|-
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Level
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | High school
{{Endcollapse}}
|-
| colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Vietnamese ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}}
! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Hán-Việt
| colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | hoạch
{{Endcollapse}}
|}

{| style="border: 1px solid #4A5D23; text-align: center; width: min(100%, 380px); float: right;"
|-
| colspan="3" style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #fff; padding: 6px 10px; font-weight: bold;" | 穫 across regional standards
|-
! style="background-color: #f8f9fa; padding: 6px 14px; text-align: left;" darkstyle="background-color: var(--wiki-surface);" | Traditional
| style="padding: 2px 14px;" | <span lang="zh-Hant" style="font-size: 2em; font-family: 'Noto Sans CJK TC', 'Noto Sans TC', 'PingFang TC', 'Microsoft JhengHei', PMingLiU, sans-serif;">穫</span>
| style="padding: 2px 14px; color: #666;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | U+7A6B
|-
! style="background-color: #f8f9fa; padding: 6px 14px; text-align: left;" darkstyle="background-color: var(--wiki-surface);" | Japanese
| style="padding: 2px 14px;" | <span lang="ja" style="font-size: 2em; font-family: 'Noto Sans CJK JP', 'Noto Sans JP', 'Hiragino Sans', 'Yu Gothic', Meiryo, sans-serif;">穫</span>
| style="padding: 2px 14px; color: #666;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | U+7A6B
|-
! style="background-color: #f8f9fa; padding: 6px 14px; text-align: left;" darkstyle="background-color: var(--wiki-surface);" | Korean
| style="padding: 2px 14px;" | <span lang="ko" style="font-size: 2em; font-family: 'Noto Sans CJK KR', 'Noto Sans KR', 'Apple SD Gothic Neo', 'Malgun Gothic', Batang, sans-serif;">穫</span>
| style="padding: 2px 14px; color: #666;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | U+7A6B
|-
! style="background-color: #f8f9fa; padding: 6px 14px; text-align: left;" darkstyle="background-color: var(--wiki-surface);" | Simplified
| style="padding: 2px 14px;" | <span lang="zh-Hans" style="font-size: 2em; font-family: 'Noto Sans CJK SC', 'Noto Sans SC', 'PingFang SC', 'Microsoft YaHei', SimSun, sans-serif;">获</span>
| style="padding: 2px 14px; color: #666;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | U+83B7
|-
| colspan="3" style="padding: 4px 14px; font-size: 0.85em; color: #666; text-align: left;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Three share one code point; the simplified form is a separate character.
|}

<div style="clear: both;"></div>

'''穫''' (simplified Chinese: '''[[获]]'''; pronounced ''huò'' in Mandarin) is a Chinese character meaning to harvest or to reap. It is a narrow, agricultural word: where English "harvest" stretches to cover any kind of gathering, 穫 refers specifically to cutting and bringing in a standing crop.

The character almost never appears alone in modern usage. Across four languages it survives chiefly inside a single compound — [[收]]<nowiki />穫 in Chinese, [[収]]<nowiki />穫 in Japanese, 수확 in Korean, ''thu hoạch'' in Vietnamese — all of which pair it with a character meaning "to gather in" and all of which mean both a literal harvest and, far more often, the payoff from any sustained effort.

穫 is also the centerpiece of one of the more consequential mergers in the mainland Chinese simplification program. It shares a simplified form, 获, with the unrelated character [[獲]] "to capture," collapsing a distinction that traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean all still maintain.

= Meaning =

== Reaping grain ==

The core sense of 穫 is to cut a ripened crop and take it in. The grain radical [[禾]] on its left fixes the meaning to cereal agriculture, and classical usage keeps it there — 穫 is what a farmer does to millet, wheat, or rice at the end of the growing season, as distinct from planting, tending, or storing.

This narrowness is the character's defining feature. Chinese has separate characters for gathering generally, for collecting objects, and for taking possession of something, and 穫 is not a substitute for any of them. It belongs to the field.

== Gains and results ==

The figurative extension is old and now dominant. A harvest is what effort yields, so 穫 came to describe the yield of any effort at all: what a student takes away from a hard course, what a researcher gets out of a year of work, what a traveler brings home.

In every modern language that uses the character, this abstract sense is far more common than the agricultural one. A Japanese executive describing a productive meeting, a Korean student reviewing a semester, and a Chinese reader closing a good book will all reach for a compound built on 穫 without any thought of a field.

= Character structure =

穫 is a phono-semantic compound written [[禾]] on the left and [[蒦]] on the right.

* '''Left side''': 禾, the grain radical, a pictogram of a stalk of cereal bending under the weight of its head. It is Kangxi radical 115, and 穫 is filed under it.
* '''Right side''': 蒦 (''huò''), the phonetic element.

== The phonetic 蒦 ==

蒦 is more interesting than most phonetics, because it is not an arbitrary sound-marker but a meaningful character in its own right. It is an ideogrammic compound: [[雈]], an owl, above [[又]], a hand. The image is a hand closing on a bird — that is, catching something.

This means 穫 can be read as combining "grain" with "catching": taking hold of the crop. Standard analysis treats 蒦 as the phonetic element, but as with many well-chosen phonetics, the sense of the component sits comfortably alongside the sense of the whole character rather than clashing with it.

== 穫 and 獲 ==

蒦 generates a large family of characters, and one of them matters enormously for understanding 穫. Placing 蒦 beside 犭, the dog radical, gives '''獲''' (''huò''), meaning to capture, to catch, or to obtain — traditionally explained as hunting down and catching an animal with a dog.

The two characters are built on exactly the same logic, differing only in what is being taken:

{| style="width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 12px 0; border: 1px solid #4A5D2333;"
|-
! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Character !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Semantic element !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Sense !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Object
|-
| 穫 || 禾 (grain) || to reap || a crop
|-
| 獲 || 犭 (dog) || to catch, to obtain || game, and by extension anything won
|}

They are pronounced identically in Mandarin, which is why the pair is a standing source of spelling errors even among fluent writers. The rule is simple in principle: 穫 for what grows, 獲 for what is caught or won. [[收]]<nowiki />穫 is a harvest; 獲得 is an acquisition.

== The simplified merger 获 ==

When mainland China simplified its script, both characters were assigned the same replacement: '''获'''. The new form is built from the 獲 side of the pair, keeping the grass and dog components and dropping the grain radical entirely.

The consequence is that simplified Chinese cannot distinguish reaping from capturing in writing. 收获 and 获得 use the same character despite descending from different ancestors, and a reader converting simplified text back to traditional must decide from context which original was meant — a problem that automated converters still get wrong.

Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean all preserve the distinction. Korean preserves it most robustly of the four, because the two characters never merged in sound either: 穫 is read 확 (''hwak'') and 獲 is read 획 (''hoek''), so 수확 and 획득 are audibly different words. Japanese keeps the graphs apart but not the sounds, since both are read ''kaku''.

== Regional glyph variants ==

The 蒦 component is drawn differently depending on the standard. Taiwan and Hong Kong write its top element as ⻀, the "ram's horn" form, which is the orthodox shape recorded in the ''[[Shuowen Jiezi]]''. Mainland China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnamese Nôm all follow the [[Kangxi Dictionary]] in writing it as 艹, the grass radical.

This is a genuine difference in printed shape rather than a difference in the character, and it accounts for the varying stroke counts quoted in dictionaries: 19 strokes in traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean typefaces, and 18 in mainland China.

== Unicode encoding ==

穫 is '''U+7A6B''', a CJK Unified Ideograph with no compatibility duplicates. The regional shapes described above are font differences within that one code point, exactly as with [[漢]] — a reader sees the ⻀ or the 艹 form depending on which regional font renders the text, not on which character was stored.

The other two members of the family are separately encoded:

{| style="width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 12px 0; border: 1px solid #4A5D2333;"
|-
! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Character !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Code point !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Sense
|-
| 穫 || U+7A6B || to reap
|-
| 獲 || U+7372 || to capture, to obtain
|-
| 获 || U+83B7 || simplified form of both
|}

获 is a distinct character rather than a variant glyph, because it differs in its actual components — this is the same principle that keeps [[漢]] and [[汉]] apart. Converting between 穫 and 获 is therefore a text-conversion operation, and it is one that only runs cleanly in one direction. Going from traditional to simplified is mechanical; going back requires knowing whether the original was 穫 or 獲.


= Pronunciation =

{| style="width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 12px 0; border: 1px solid #4A5D2333;"
|-
! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Language !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Reading !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Notes
|-
| Mandarin Chinese || ''huò'' || Fourth tone; identical to the reading of 獲
|-
| Cantonese || ''wok6'' || Also identical to 獲
|-
| Japanese (on'yomi) || ''kaku'' (カク) || A ''jōyō'' character with no commonly used native reading
|-
| Korean || ''hwak'' (확) || Taught with the gloss 거둘 확 (''geodul hwak''), "the ''hwak'' that means to gather"; distinct from 獲, read 획
|-
| Vietnamese || ''hoạch'' || Appears in Sino-Vietnamese compounds only
|}

= Use in modern languages =

== In Chinese ==

穫 is uncommon as a free-standing word and appears in a small set of compounds:

* 收穫 / 收获 (''shōuhuò'') — harvest; gains, takeaways, what one gets out of something
* 秋穫 / 秋获 (''qiūhuò'') — the autumn reaping
* 耕穫 / 耕获 (''gēnghuò'') — plowing and reaping, used figuratively for sustained labor

The proverb 一分耕耘，一分收穫 — a measure of effort brings a measure of harvest — is the character's most quoted appearance, and functions much as "you reap what you sow" does in English.

== In Japanese ==

Written 穫, the character is effectively confined to one word and its derivatives:

* 収穫 (''shūkaku'') — harvest; results, findings, what came out of an effort
* 収穫量 (''shūkakuryō'') — yield, crop volume
* 収穫祭 (''shūkakusai'') — a harvest festival

Business Japanese leans on 収穫 heavily in its figurative sense. A meeting or trip described as having 収穫 produced something worthwhile, with no agricultural connotation whatsoever.

== In Korean ==

Read 확 (''hwak''), the character survives almost entirely inside one word:

* 수확 (收穫) — harvest; gains, results
* 수확량 (收穫量) — yield
* 수확기 (收穫期) — harvest season

Because Korean is written in hangul, the character itself is invisible in ordinary text, and 수확 functions as an unanalyzed word. The distinction from 획득 (獲得, "acquisition") is carried entirely by the different vowel, which is why Korean speakers rarely confuse the two concepts the way Chinese writers confuse the two characters.

== In Vietnamese ==

Vietnamese preserves 穫 as ''hoạch'' in Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary: ''thu hoạch'' (收穫, harvest or gains) and ''thu hoạch được'' (to obtain a result). The related ''hoạch'' in ''kế hoạch'' ("plan") is a different character, 劃, and the two are unconnected despite the identical romanization.

= Further reading =

This article is a general overview. Readers wanting fuller detail — reconstructed [[Old Chinese]] phonology, dialectal readings, the full set of characters built on 蒦, and classical citations — can consult the following:

* [https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr38/ Unicode Standard Annex #38] — the authoritative definition of the Unihan database fields used throughout this article
* [https://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/ Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants] — Taiwan Ministry of Education; searchable, with historical variant forms and source documents for each character
* [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A9%AB 穫 on Wiktionary] — the traditional form, covering Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese
* [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%8D%B2 獲 on Wiktionary] — the paired character, with the Kōjien account of its hunting-dog etymology
* [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%92%A6 蒦 on Wiktionary] — the shared phonetic component and the full list of characters built on it

= See also =

* [[Chinese characters]]
* [[Han unification]]
* [[Radical (Chinese characters)]]
* [[Simplified Chinese characters]]

Loading editor…

{| style="border: 2px solid #4A5D23; width: min(100%, 380px); float: left;" |- | colspan="4" style="text-align: center; font-size: 5em; padding: 26px 0; line-height: 1; color: #4A5D23;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | 穫 |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Meaning | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | to harvest; to reap |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Radical | style="padding: 6px 10px; width: 23%; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | 禾 + 14 ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Strokes | style="padding: 6px 10px; width: 23%; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | 19 |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Composition | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | ⿰禾蒦 |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Formation | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Phono-semantic |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7); border-color: #2c2c2e;" | Unicode | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" | U+7A6B |- | colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Mandarin ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}} ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Pinyin | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | huò |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Zhuyin | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | ㄏㄨㄛˋ |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Simplified | style="padding: 6px 10px; width: 23%;" | 获 ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Strokes | style="padding: 6px 10px; width: 23%;" | 10 {{Endcollapse}} |- | colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Cantonese ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}} ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Jyutping | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | wok6 {{Endcollapse}} |- | colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Japanese ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}} ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | On'yomi | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | カク (kaku) |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Level | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | Jōyō {{Endcollapse}} |- | colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Korean ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}} ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Reading | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | 확 (hwak) |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Eumhun | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | 거둘 (geodul) 확 — "to gather in" |- ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Level | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | High school {{Endcollapse}} |- | colspan="4" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Vietnamese ]'''"|color="#4A5D23"|style="width: 100%;"}} ! style="color: #4A5D23; text-align: left; width: 27%; padding: 6px 10px;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #4A5D23 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Hán-Việt | colspan="3" style="padding: 6px 10px;" | hoạch {{Endcollapse}} |} {| style="border: 1px solid #4A5D23; text-align: center; width: min(100%, 380px); float: right;" |- | colspan="3" style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #fff; padding: 6px 10px; font-weight: bold;" | 穫 across regional standards |- ! style="background-color: #f8f9fa; padding: 6px 14px; text-align: left;" darkstyle="background-color: var(--wiki-surface);" | Traditional | style="padding: 2px 14px;" | <span lang="zh-Hant" style="font-size: 2em; font-family: 'Noto Sans CJK TC', 'Noto Sans TC', 'PingFang TC', 'Microsoft JhengHei', PMingLiU, sans-serif;">穫</span> | style="padding: 2px 14px; color: #666;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | U+7A6B |- ! style="background-color: #f8f9fa; padding: 6px 14px; text-align: left;" darkstyle="background-color: var(--wiki-surface);" | Japanese | style="padding: 2px 14px;" | <span lang="ja" style="font-size: 2em; font-family: 'Noto Sans CJK JP', 'Noto Sans JP', 'Hiragino Sans', 'Yu Gothic', Meiryo, sans-serif;">穫</span> | style="padding: 2px 14px; color: #666;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | U+7A6B |- ! style="background-color: #f8f9fa; padding: 6px 14px; text-align: left;" darkstyle="background-color: var(--wiki-surface);" | Korean | style="padding: 2px 14px;" | <span lang="ko" style="font-size: 2em; font-family: 'Noto Sans CJK KR', 'Noto Sans KR', 'Apple SD Gothic Neo', 'Malgun Gothic', Batang, sans-serif;">穫</span> | style="padding: 2px 14px; color: #666;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | U+7A6B |- ! style="background-color: #f8f9fa; padding: 6px 14px; text-align: left;" darkstyle="background-color: var(--wiki-surface);" | Simplified | style="padding: 2px 14px;" | <span lang="zh-Hans" style="font-size: 2em; font-family: 'Noto Sans CJK SC', 'Noto Sans SC', 'PingFang SC', 'Microsoft YaHei', SimSun, sans-serif;">获</span> | style="padding: 2px 14px; color: #666;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | U+83B7 |- | colspan="3" style="padding: 4px 14px; font-size: 0.85em; color: #666; text-align: left;" darkstyle="color: color-mix(in srgb, #666 55%, #f5f5f7);" | Three share one code point; the simplified form is a separate character. |} <div style="clear: both;"></div> '''穫''' (simplified Chinese: '''[[获]]'''; pronounced ''huò'' in Mandarin) is a Chinese character meaning to harvest or to reap. It is a narrow, agricultural word: where English "harvest" stretches to cover any kind of gathering, 穫 refers specifically to cutting and bringing in a standing crop. The character almost never appears alone in modern usage. Across four languages it survives chiefly inside a single compound — [[收]]<nowiki />穫 in Chinese, [[収]]<nowiki />穫 in Japanese, 수확 in Korean, ''thu hoạch'' in Vietnamese — all of which pair it with a character meaning "to gather in" and all of which mean both a literal harvest and, far more often, the payoff from any sustained effort. 穫 is also the centerpiece of one of the more consequential mergers in the mainland Chinese simplification program. It shares a simplified form, 获, with the unrelated character [[獲]] "to capture," collapsing a distinction that traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean all still maintain. = Meaning = == Reaping grain == The core sense of 穫 is to cut a ripened crop and take it in. The grain radical [[禾]] on its left fixes the meaning to cereal agriculture, and classical usage keeps it there — 穫 is what a farmer does to millet, wheat, or rice at the end of the growing season, as distinct from planting, tending, or storing. This narrowness is the character's defining feature. Chinese has separate characters for gathering generally, for collecting objects, and for taking possession of something, and 穫 is not a substitute for any of them. It belongs to the field. == Gains and results == The figurative extension is old and now dominant. A harvest is what effort yields, so 穫 came to describe the yield of any effort at all: what a student takes away from a hard course, what a researcher gets out of a year of work, what a traveler brings home. In every modern language that uses the character, this abstract sense is far more common than the agricultural one. A Japanese executive describing a productive meeting, a Korean student reviewing a semester, and a Chinese reader closing a good book will all reach for a compound built on 穫 without any thought of a field. = Character structure = 穫 is a phono-semantic compound written [[禾]] on the left and [[蒦]] on the right. * '''Left side''': 禾, the grain radical, a pictogram of a stalk of cereal bending under the weight of its head. It is Kangxi radical 115, and 穫 is filed under it. * '''Right side''': 蒦 (''huò''), the phonetic element. == The phonetic 蒦 == 蒦 is more interesting than most phonetics, because it is not an arbitrary sound-marker but a meaningful character in its own right. It is an ideogrammic compound: [[雈]], an owl, above [[又]], a hand. The image is a hand closing on a bird — that is, catching something. This means 穫 can be read as combining "grain" with "catching": taking hold of the crop. Standard analysis treats 蒦 as the phonetic element, but as with many well-chosen phonetics, the sense of the component sits comfortably alongside the sense of the whole character rather than clashing with it. == 穫 and 獲 == 蒦 generates a large family of characters, and one of them matters enormously for understanding 穫. Placing 蒦 beside 犭, the dog radical, gives '''獲''' (''huò''), meaning to capture, to catch, or to obtain — traditionally explained as hunting down and catching an animal with a dog. The two characters are built on exactly the same logic, differing only in what is being taken: {| style="width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 12px 0; border: 1px solid #4A5D2333;" |- ! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Character !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Semantic element !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Sense !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Object |- | 穫 || 禾 (grain) || to reap || a crop |- | 獲 || 犭 (dog) || to catch, to obtain || game, and by extension anything won |} They are pronounced identically in Mandarin, which is why the pair is a standing source of spelling errors even among fluent writers. The rule is simple in principle: 穫 for what grows, 獲 for what is caught or won. [[收]]<nowiki />穫 is a harvest; 獲得 is an acquisition. == The simplified merger 获 == When mainland China simplified its script, both characters were assigned the same replacement: '''获'''. The new form is built from the 獲 side of the pair, keeping the grass and dog components and dropping the grain radical entirely. The consequence is that simplified Chinese cannot distinguish reaping from capturing in writing. 收获 and 获得 use the same character despite descending from different ancestors, and a reader converting simplified text back to traditional must decide from context which original was meant — a problem that automated converters still get wrong. Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean all preserve the distinction. Korean preserves it most robustly of the four, because the two characters never merged in sound either: 穫 is read 확 (''hwak'') and 獲 is read 획 (''hoek''), so 수확 and 획득 are audibly different words. Japanese keeps the graphs apart but not the sounds, since both are read ''kaku''. == Regional glyph variants == The 蒦 component is drawn differently depending on the standard. Taiwan and Hong Kong write its top element as ⻀, the "ram's horn" form, which is the orthodox shape recorded in the ''[[Shuowen Jiezi]]''. Mainland China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnamese Nôm all follow the [[Kangxi Dictionary]] in writing it as 艹, the grass radical. This is a genuine difference in printed shape rather than a difference in the character, and it accounts for the varying stroke counts quoted in dictionaries: 19 strokes in traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean typefaces, and 18 in mainland China. == Unicode encoding == 穫 is '''U+7A6B''', a CJK Unified Ideograph with no compatibility duplicates. The regional shapes described above are font differences within that one code point, exactly as with [[漢]] — a reader sees the ⻀ or the 艹 form depending on which regional font renders the text, not on which character was stored. The other two members of the family are separately encoded: {| style="width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 12px 0; border: 1px solid #4A5D2333;" |- ! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Character !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Code point !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Sense |- | 穫 || U+7A6B || to reap |- | 獲 || U+7372 || to capture, to obtain |- | 获 || U+83B7 || simplified form of both |} 获 is a distinct character rather than a variant glyph, because it differs in its actual components — this is the same principle that keeps [[漢]] and [[汉]] apart. Converting between 穫 and 获 is therefore a text-conversion operation, and it is one that only runs cleanly in one direction. Going from traditional to simplified is mechanical; going back requires knowing whether the original was 穫 or 獲. = Pronunciation = {| style="width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 12px 0; border: 1px solid #4A5D2333;" |- ! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Language !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Reading !! style="background-color: #4A5D23; color: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 6px 10px;" | Notes |- | Mandarin Chinese || ''huò'' || Fourth tone; identical to the reading of 獲 |- | Cantonese || ''wok6'' || Also identical to 獲 |- | Japanese (on'yomi) || ''kaku'' (カク) || A ''jōyō'' character with no commonly used native reading |- | Korean || ''hwak'' (확) || Taught with the gloss 거둘 확 (''geodul hwak''), "the ''hwak'' that means to gather"; distinct from 獲, read 획 |- | Vietnamese || ''hoạch'' || Appears in Sino-Vietnamese compounds only |} = Use in modern languages = == In Chinese == 穫 is uncommon as a free-standing word and appears in a small set of compounds: * 收穫 / 收获 (''shōuhuò'') — harvest; gains, takeaways, what one gets out of something * 秋穫 / 秋获 (''qiūhuò'') — the autumn reaping * 耕穫 / 耕获 (''gēnghuò'') — plowing and reaping, used figuratively for sustained labor The proverb 一分耕耘，一分收穫 — a measure of effort brings a measure of harvest — is the character's most quoted appearance, and functions much as "you reap what you sow" does in English. == In Japanese == Written 穫, the character is effectively confined to one word and its derivatives: * 収穫 (''shūkaku'') — harvest; results, findings, what came out of an effort * 収穫量 (''shūkakuryō'') — yield, crop volume * 収穫祭 (''shūkakusai'') — a harvest festival Business Japanese leans on 収穫 heavily in its figurative sense. A meeting or trip described as having 収穫 produced something worthwhile, with no agricultural connotation whatsoever. == In Korean == Read 확 (''hwak''), the character survives almost entirely inside one word: * 수확 (收穫) — harvest; gains, results * 수확량 (收穫量) — yield * 수확기 (收穫期) — harvest season Because Korean is written in hangul, the character itself is invisible in ordinary text, and 수확 functions as an unanalyzed word. The distinction from 획득 (獲得, "acquisition") is carried entirely by the different vowel, which is why Korean speakers rarely confuse the two concepts the way Chinese writers confuse the two characters. == In Vietnamese == Vietnamese preserves 穫 as ''hoạch'' in Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary: ''thu hoạch'' (收穫, harvest or gains) and ''thu hoạch được'' (to obtain a result). The related ''hoạch'' in ''kế hoạch'' ("plan") is a different character, 劃, and the two are unconnected despite the identical romanization. = Further reading = This article is a general overview. Readers wanting fuller detail — reconstructed [[Old Chinese]] phonology, dialectal readings, the full set of characters built on 蒦, and classical citations — can consult the following: * [https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr38/ Unicode Standard Annex #38] — the authoritative definition of the Unihan database fields used throughout this article * [https://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/ Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants] — Taiwan Ministry of Education; searchable, with historical variant forms and source documents for each character * [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A9%AB 穫 on Wiktionary] — the traditional form, covering Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese * [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%8D%B2 獲 on Wiktionary] — the paired character, with the Kōjien account of its hunting-dog etymology * [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%92%A6 蒦 on Wiktionary] — the shared phonetic component and the full list of characters built on it = See also = * [[Chinese characters]] * [[Han unification]] * [[Radical (Chinese characters)]] * [[Simplified Chinese characters]]