Chinese Character Wiki
任

rèn, rén

responsibility

Original meaning: 

to hold in arms

Phonosemantic compound. 亻 represents the meaning and 壬 represents the sound.

Components
亻 meaning component

亻  Meaning component

rén

  

person

亻 is a component form of 人.

壬 sound component

壬  Sound component

rén

  

9th heavenly stem

Evolution

任 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
任 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
任 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

任  

rèn

trust to, rely on, appoint; to bear, duty, office; allow; to assign; to appoint; to take up a post; office; responsibility; to let; to allow; to give free rein to; no matter (how, what etc); classifier for terms served in office, or for spouses, girlfriends etc (as in 前任男友)

任  

Rén

surname Ren; Ren County 任縣|任县[Rén​Xiàn] in Hebei

Most common words with 任
Freq.
Word
Meaning

任何

any

任务

mission

责任

blame

信任

to trust

任

to assign

Component uses

Meaning component in 3 characters (0 verified)

凭 賃 赁

Sound component in 2 characters (0 verified)

恁 荏

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*n[ə]m-s

nyimH

rèn

burden; charge (n.)


Statistics

HSK level 3

Appears in 92.4075% of movies

239th most common character in movies

186th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

6

Unicode

U+4EFB

Shuowen

“任，符也。从人，壬聲。”


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