Searching for the character for "Punch"

[chris1000]

Hi
I am an English speaking kung-fu student who practices a style that has roots in Malaysia. Much of the terminology we use is Hokkien and I am trying to create a list of this terminology with the phonetic, hanzi and the meaning. I am struggling to find the character for the word we use for punch (strike with fist). Phonetically we say Cheng or Jing, I have been told this might be written zhiong or ciong (sorry for the lack of tone) in standard Romanization and that this word is not used in Cantonese. 揰 (ciong) may be what I'm after but the definition seems to relate more to punch as in "poke a hole into". It has also been suggested to me that this word is in the verbal language only and has no character and that 捶 (dui) is the closest written alternative. Can this be true, does anyone have any thoughts or ideas?

Cheers.

[tadpole]

Do you know that there is a on-line Taiwanese dictionary published by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan? You can search word in various ways:

http://twblg.dict.edu.tw/tw/index.htm

舂

詞目 舂　　　　部首：臼 134-05-11
音讀 tsing　
釋義 1.搗。把穀物用杵臼搗去皮殼。例：舂米　tsing-bí(把稻穀的外殼去掉，而保留其中的米粒。)、
2.擊打、撞、揍。例：用別人的拳頭母舂石獅。Īng pa̍t-lâng ê kûn-thâu-bó tsing tsio̍h-sai. (用別人的拳頭去擊打石獅子。比喻借用別人的力量來圖謀自己的利益。)　推、揍

[chris1000]

Hi tadpole,

Thanks for the help. I dont read hanzi but I gather now that 舂 is the correct character as per definition 2. from the site. In Mandarin & cantonese this word is only defined as 'grind in mortar'.

Thanks again.
Chris

[tadpole]

Hi tadpole,
Thanks for the help. I dont read hanzi but I gather now that 舂 is the correct character as per definition 2. from the site. In Mandarin & cantonese this word is only defined as 'grind in mortar'.

That is correct. I don't know how reliable is the quality of this on-line dictionary. But so far it seems pretty good to me (I've been using it for about 1.5 years), and if a character is not the proper one, they usually do point it out. The Chinese description part does explain what you said for Mandarin and cantonese for the entry 1, but in entry 2, it explains that it also stands for punching someone with a fist.