Chinese Character Wiki
氣

qì

air

Original meaning: 

gift of grain

Phonosemantic compound. 米 represents the meaning and 气 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "gift of grain", now written as 餼. The current meaning "air" is a phonetic loan.

Components
米 meaning component

米  Meaning component

mǐ

  

rice

气 sound,iconic component

气  Sound Iconic component

qì

  

air

Depicts a gust of air.

Evolution

氣 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
氣 Clerical script Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)

Clerical script

Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)
氣 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

气 (氣) 

qì

air, gas, steam, vapor; spirit; gas; air; smell; weather; to make angry; to annoy; to get angry; vital energy; qi

Most common words with 氣
Freq.
Word
Meaning

气

gas

生气

to get angry

天气

weather

空气

air

客气

polite

Component uses

Sound component in 3 characters (2 verified)

愾 餼 滊

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*C.qʰəp-s

khj+jH

qì

cloudy vapors

*qʰət-s

xj+jH

xì

to present food


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 91.6867% of movies

275th most common character in movies

217th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

10

Simplified

气

Unicode

U+6C23

Shuowen

“氣，饋客芻米也。从米，气聲。《春秋傳》曰：‘齊人來氣諸矦。’，氣或从既；餼，氣或从食。”


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