yànyān

throat

Phonosemantic compound. represents the meaning and represents the sound. Simplified form of .

Components
口 meaning component

  Meaning component

kǒu

  

mouth

因 sound component

  Sound component

yīn

  

cause

Evolution

咽 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
咽 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

yàn

throat; pharynx; variant of |[yàn]

 

yān

narrow pass

 

to choke (in crying)

() 

yàn

to swallow

Most common words with 咽
Freq.
Word
Meaning

throat

咽喉

throat

咽下

to swallow

吞咽

to swallow

哽咽

to choke with emotion

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*ʔˤi[n]

'en

yān

gullet

*ʔˤi[n]-s

'enH

yàn

swallow (v.)


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 4.2608% of movies

2584th most common character in movies

2031st most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

9

Unicode

U+54BD

Shuowen

“咽,嗌也。从口,因聲。”


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