爭
zhēng HSK3

strife, quarrel

争 (爭) zhēng
argue verb
to debate, dispute, or argue

两人为了这个问题争个不停。

liǎng rén wèi了 zhèi gè wèn​tí zhēng gè bù​tíng.

The two of them were arguing incessantly over this issue.

strive verb
to strive, compete, or vie for

他从小好胜心就很强，凡事都要争第一。

tā cóng xiǎo hào​shèng​xīn jiù hěn qiáng, fán shì dōu yào zhēng dì​yī.

He has been very competitive since he was a child and always strives to be number one in everything.

deficient verb
lacking or short of (dialect usage)

这笔钱还争几块钱才够。

zhè bǐ qián hái zhēng jǐ kuài qián cái gòu.

This amount of money is still a few yuan short.

how verb
interrogative meaning how or what (literary usage)

争知我这一生要经历多少苦难。

zhēng zhī wǒ zhè yī​shēng yào jīng​lì duō​shao kǔ​nàn.

Who would have known how much suffering I would endure in my life?

Frequency
Character
Written text
344th most common 643.0 per million
Movie subtitles
643rd most common 212.6 per million appears in 56% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
18.3 per million appears in 8% of films
Written text
49.8 per million

Details
HSK 3.0
Level 3
Simplified
争
Strokes
8
Unicode
U+722D

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