beg

Original meaning: 

air

Originally a variant of , which depicts a gust of air. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Evolution

乞 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
乞 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
乞 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

beg; request; to beg

Most common words with 乞
Freq.
Word
Meaning

乞丐

beggar

乞求

to beg

乞讨

to beg

to beg

行乞

to beg

Component uses

Meaning component in 2 characters (0 verified)

Sound component in 11 characters (1 verified)

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*C.qʰət

khj+t

beg, ask


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 4.7413% of movies

2445th most common character in movies

2429th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

3

Unicode

U+4E5E


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