xián
spit, saliva
Depicts drops of spit (氵) coming from an open mouth (欠).
Components
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 㳄
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
to drool | ||
variant of 涎[xián] | ||
to hunger for | ||
to yearn for | ||
greedy |
Component uses
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*s-N-qa[r] | zjen | xián | saliva (from envy?) |
*s-N-qa[r] | zjen | xián | spittle |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
3771st most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 7 |
Unicode | U+3CC4 |
Shuowen | “,慕欲口液也。从欠,从水。” |
Sources
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

