童 - Dong Chinese dictionary

tóng

child

Original meaning:

male criminal

Depicts a chisel tool (辛) piercing through a person's eye (目). This was usually given as punishment to male slaves. 東 was added later to represent the sound. Based on the original meaning "male criminal". The meaning later shifted to "boy servant" (now written as 僮) and "child".

Components

辛 Iconic component

xīn

laborious

Depicts a chisel-like tool.

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

目 Iconic component

mù

eye

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

東 Sound component

dōng

east

Modern form looks like 里.

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

Evolution

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)

Bronze script

Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

童

tóng

child, boy, servant boy; virgin; child

童

Tóng

surname Tong

Most common words with 童

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	儿童	child
	童	child
	童年	childhood
	童话	children's fairy tales
	童子军	child soldiers

Component uses

Sound component in 9 characters (3 verified)

鐘撞僮幢憧瞳潼疃艟

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*[d]ˤoŋ	duwng	tóng	boy

Statistics

HSK level 4

Appears in 26.6378% of movies

1183rd most common character in movies

1229th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	12
Unicode	U+7AE5
Shuowen	“童，男有辠曰奴，奴曰童。女曰妾。从，重省聲。，籀文童，中與中同从。，以為古文疾字。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

季旭昇《說文新證》p.166

漢語多功能字庫

許進雄《新編進階甲骨文字典: 甲骨文發現120周年紀念版》p.114