掩
yǎn HSK7

to cover (with the hand)

掩 yǎn
conceal verb
to cover up or conceal

他用手掩住嘴巴，不敢笑出声来。

tā yòng shǒu yǎn zhù zuǐ​ba, bù gǎn xiào chū​shēng lái.

He covered his mouth with his hand, not daring to laugh out loud.

pinch verb
to get one's fingers or body parts caught when closing a door or lid

小心别让抽屉掩了手。

xiǎo​xīn bié ràng chōu​ti yǎn le shǒu.

Be careful not to get your hand caught in the drawer.

surprise attack verb
to launch a surprise attack or ambush (literary)

乘其不备，掩其不意。

chéng qí bù bèi, yǎn qí bù yì.

Catch them off guard and take them by surprise.

close verb
to close or shut a door, book, or similar object

离开时请随手把门掩上。

lí​kāi shí qǐng suí​shǒu bǎ mén yǎn​shàng.

Please pull the door shut when you leave.

Frequency
Character
Written text
1,514th most common 70.7 per million
Movie subtitles
1,427th most common 48.8 per million appears in 23% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
1.61 per million appears in 1% of films
Written text
8.59 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 6
HSK 3.0
Level 7
Strokes
11
Unicode
U+63A9

Sources
Definitions
CC-CEDICT
Frequency data
MTSU Chinese text computingSUBTLEX-CHBCC Corpus (BLCU)