狗 - Dong Chinese dictionary

gǒu

dog

Phonosemantic compound. 犭 represents the meaning and 句 represents the sound.

Components

犭 Meaning component

quǎn

dog

犭 is a component form of 犬.

句 Sound component

jù, gōu

sentence

狗 and 句 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.狗 /*Cə.kˤroʔ/
句 /*[k]ˤ(r)o/, /*[k]ˤ(r)ok-s/, /*[k](r)o-s/

Evolution

Bronze script

Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

狗

gǒu

dog, canis familiaris; dog; CL:隻|只[zhī],條|条[tiáo]

Most common words with 狗

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	狗	dog
	狗屁	bullshit
	小狗	pup
	热狗	hot dog (loanword)
	走狗	hound

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*Cə.kˤroʔ	kuwX	gǒu	dog

Statistics

HSK level 2

Appears in 48.7266% of movies

488th most common character in movies

1281st most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	8
Unicode	U+72D7
Shuowen	“狗，孔子曰：‘狗，叩也，叩气吠以守。’从犬，句聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Meaning