yàn

inkstone

Phonosemantic compound. represents the meaning and represents the sound.

Components
石 meaning component

  Meaning component

shídàn

  

stone

見 sound component

  Sound component

jiànxiàn

  

see

Evolution

硯 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
硯 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

() 

yàn

inkstone; ink-stone

Most common words with 硯
Freq.
Word
Meaning

砚台

ink stone

ink-stone

端砚

high-quality ink stonemade in Duanxi and Guangdong

程砚秋

Cheng Yanqiu (1904-1958), famous Beijing opera star, second only to 梅蘭芳|梅兰芳[Méi​Lán​fāng]

砚石

ink stone

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*C.[ŋ]ˤe[r]-s (< uvular)

ngenH

yàn

smooth stone; inkstone


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

4121st most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

12

Simplified

Unicode

U+786F

Shuowen

“硯,石滑也。从石,見聲。”


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons License