Chinese Character Wiki
亏

kuī

deficit, lose

Original meaning: 

wind instrument

Originally the same character as 于, depicting a musical wind instrument with a reed, which is now written as 竽. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Evolution

亏 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
亏 Bronze script Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)

Bronze script

Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)
亏 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

亏 (虧) 

kuī

lose, fail; damage; deficient; deficiency; deficit; luckily; it's lucky that...; (often ironically) fancy that...

Most common words with 亏
Freq.
Word
Meaning

多亏

thanks to

亏损

deficit

亏

deficit

幸亏

fortunately

吃亏

to suffer losses

Component uses

Meaning component in 2 characters (1 verified)

虧 雩

Sound component in 4 characters (1 verified)

𠌶 夸 肟 圬

Iconic component in 1 character (1 verified)

𠌶

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[k]ʷʰ(r)aj

khjwe

kuī

diminish


Statistics

HSK level 5

Appears in 12.1416% of movies

2003rd most common character in movies

1738th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

3

Traditional

虧

Unicode

U+4E8F

Shuowen

“于，於也。象气之舒于。从丂，从一。一者，其气平之也。”


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