plentiful, gamble

Original meaning: 

fight

Phonosemantic compound. represents the meaning and represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "fight", which later shifted to "win", "plentiful", and "gamble".

Components
盾 meaning component

  Meaning component

dùn

  

shield

Depicts a shield. Modern form looks like .

尃 sound component

  Sound component

  

state, announce

Evolution

博 Bronze script Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)

Bronze script

Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
博 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
博 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

gamble, play games; wide, broad; extensive; ample; rich; obtain; aim; to win; to get; plentiful; to gamble

() 

old variant of [bó]

Most common words with 博
Freq.
Word
Meaning

ample

博士

doctor

博物馆

museum

赌博

to gamble

博文

blog article

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*pˤak

pak

broad


Statistics

HSK level 5

Appears in 33.1571% of movies

686th most common character in movies

965th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

12

Unicode

U+535A

Shuowen

“博,大,通也。从十,从尃。尃,布也。”


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