xīn

fragrant

Phonosemantic compound. represents the meaning and represents the sound.

Components
香 meaning component

  Meaning component

xiāng

  

fragrant

殸 sound component

  Sound component

qìng

  

stone chimes

Evolution

馨 Bronze script Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)

Bronze script

Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
馨 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
馨 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
馨 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

xīn

fragrant, aromatic; distant fragrance; fragrant

Most common words with 馨
Freq.
Word
Meaning

温馨

comfort

fragrant

康乃馨

carnation or clove pink

馨香

fragrance

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*qʰˤeŋ

xeng

xīn

fragrance


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 3.7963% of movies

2720th most common character in movies

2586th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

20

Unicode

U+99A8

Shuowen

“馨,香之遠聞者。从香、殸聲。殸,籀文磬。”


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