句 jù pairs a wrapping element with 口 (kǒu, mouth). The curved stroke that bends over the top encloses the mouth below, and the early sense of the graph is to bend, hook, or wrap around. Speech wrapped and tied off into a finished unit is a 句: a stretch of words bundled together and brought to a stop. The 口 supplies the idea of the mouth and what it utters; the hooking element supplies the wrapping that closes the unit off.

句 carries a second, older reading gōu (to hook; crooked), preserved mainly in proper names such as 句践 Gōu Jiàn, the famous king of Yuè. In modern usage that reading has largely passed to the character 勾 gōu, while 句 itself settled onto jù and the field of speech. This page follows the jù reading throughout.

Three senses branch from the bundled utterance:

1. A sentence or clause. The complete grammatical unit: 句子 jùzi (sentence), 句号 jùhào (the full stop that closes it), 从句 cóngjù (subordinate clause).
2. A phrase or line. A shorter run of words, especially a line of poetry: 词句 cíjù (wording, phrasing), 诗句 shījù (a line of verse), 名句 míngjù (a famous line).
3. The measure word for utterances. 句 counts spoken remarks and lines: 一句话 yī jù huà (one remark), 说几句 shuō jǐ jù (to say a few words).

The thread through every sense is the same: a 句 is speech tied off into a unit you can count, write down, or quote.

Below the full sentence, 句 names the shorter run of words: the phrase, the wording, and above all the line of verse. Classical Chinese poetry is measured in 句, and a poem is admired or quoted line by line. A line that everyone knows by heart becomes a 名句 míngjù, a famous line, the kind of phrase that detaches from its poem and circulates on its own. To say someone speaks in 词句 cíjù is to comment on their choice of wording, the texture of the phrases they pick.

This is the 句 of the writer and the reader rather than the grammarian: the line on the page that can be weighed, recited, and remembered as a unit of craft.

The most frequent job 句 does in conversation is as a measure word: it counts spoken remarks, lines, and sentences. 一句话 yī jù huà is "one remark" or "a single sentence," 两句 liǎng jù is "a couple of lines," and 说几句 shuō jǐ jù is "to say a few words." The thing being counted is usually 话 huà (speech) or is left understood, so 我跟他说了几句 means "I exchanged a few words with him."

Because it counts whole utterances, 句 carries a faint sense of brevity and weight. 一句话 can mean "in a word," the gist boiled down to a single sentence, as in 一句话, 我同意 "in short, I agree." And 多嘴多舌 aside, even one well-placed 句 can matter: a single remark, 一句话, can decide a quarrel or settle a doubt.

See the 口 mouth at the bottom of 句, and a stroke curling over the top to wrap the speech and tie it off. That bundle of tied-off speech is the whole character: a unit you can count, write, or quote.

Make the bundle a complete thought and it is a sentence (句子), closed by the small circle of a 句号. Make it a line on the page and it is a 诗句, a verse worth remembering as a 名句. Hold up a finger and count, and 句 becomes the measure word for what the mouth says: 一句话, one remark. Whenever you meet 句, picture the mouth and the wrapping stroke, and ask which bundle of speech is being tied off.