成 - Dong Chinese dictionary

Chinese Character Wiki

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简体

繁體

pīnyīn

ㄅㄆㄇㄈ

chéng

completed

Original meaning:

city

Depicts defending city walls (丁) with an axe (戌). 丁 also represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "city", now written as 城. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components

戌 Iconic component

xū, qu

11th terrestrial branch

Depicts an axe.

丁 Sound Iconic component

dīng

cubes

Depicts city walls.

成 and 丁 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.成 /*[d]eŋ/, /*m-[d]eŋ/
丁 /*tˤeŋ/, /*tˤeŋ/, /*tˤreŋ/

Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 丁 than it was in ancient scripts.

Evolution

成 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)

成 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

成 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

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

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

chéng

completed, finished, fixed; to succeed; to finish; to complete; to accomplish; to become; to turn into; to be all right; OK!; one tenth

Chéng

surname Cheng

Most common words with 成

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	成	to succeed
	成为	to become
	成功	success
	完成	to complete
	变成	to change into

Component uses

Sound component in 6 characters (4 verified)

城盛誠诚晟铖

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*[d]eŋ	dzyeng	chéng	to become (v.i.)
*m-[d]eŋ	dzyeng	chéng	to complete (tr. v)

Statistics

HSK level 2

Appears in 98.9108% of movies

135th most common character in movies

59th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	6
Unicode	U+6210
Shuowen	“成，就也。从戊，丁聲。，古文成从午。”

Sources

Academia Sinica

Make Me a Hanzi

MTSU Chinese text computing

季旭昇《說文新證》p.963-964

漢語多功能字庫

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