shòu
beast
Original meaning:
to hunt
Depicts using a hunting tool (單) and a dog (犬) to hunt for and capture wild animals. Original form of 狩. 口 was later added as a distinguishing mark. The meaning later shifted to "beast". The traditional component 犬 was deleted for simplification.
Components
單 Iconic Simplified component
dān, shàn
single
口 Distinguishing component
kǒu
mouth
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Traditional script
ModernSimplified script
ModernStatistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 15.3612% of movies
1462nd most common character in movies
1602nd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 11 |
Traditional | |
Unicode | U+517D |
Sources
李学勤《字源》p.1270
劉志基《中國漢字文物大系》Vol. 14, p.393
何琳儀《戰國古文字典:戰國文字聲系》p.218
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

