Chinese Character Wiki
墨

mò

ink

Phonosemantic compound. 土 represents the meaning and 黑 represents the sound. Originally written as 黑, which depicts a person whose face has been tattooed.

Components
黑 sound,iconic component

黑  Sound Iconic component

hēi

  

black

Depicts a person whose face has been tattooed.

土 meaning component

土  Meaning component

tǔ

  

earth

Evolution

墨 Bronze script Early Warring States (~400 BC)

Bronze script

Early Warring States (~400 BC)
墨 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
墨 Clerical script Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)

Clerical script

Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)
墨 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

墨  

mò

ink; writing; ink stick; China ink; CL:塊|块[kuài]; corporal punishment consisting of tattooing characters on the victim's forehead

墨  

Mò

surname Mo; abbr. for 墨西哥[Mò​xī​gē], Mexico

Most common words with 墨
Freq.
Word
Meaning

墨西哥

Mexico

墨

ink stick

墨镜

sunglasses

墨水

ink

墨尔本

Melbourne, Australia

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*C.mˤək

mok

mò

ink


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 18.5167% of movies

1233rd most common character in movies

1493rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

15

Unicode

U+58A8

Shuowen

“墨，書墨也。从土，从黑，黑亦聲。”


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