xián
virtuous
Phonosemantic compound. 貝 represents the meaning and 臤 represents the sound.
Evolution
Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 賢
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
worthy or virtuous person | ||
(of a wife) wise and kind | ||
a sage | ||
a good wife and loving mother | ||
worthy little brother |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[g]ˤi[n] | hen | xián | worthy |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 2.1624% of movies
2272nd most common character in movies
1943rd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 15 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+8CE2 |
Shuowen | “賢，多才也。从貝，臤聲。” |
Sources
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