Chinese Character Wiki
何

hé

what

Original meaning: 

shoulder a burden

Depiction of a man carrying an axe on over his shoulders. The right side of the form was later phoneticized into 可. The current meaning "what" is a phonetic loan.

Components
亻 meaning component

亻  Meaning component

rén

  

person

亻 is a component form of 人.

可 sound component

可  Sound component

kě, kè

  

able to

Evolution

何 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

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

Bronze script

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

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

何  

hé

what, why, where, which, how; what; how; why; which; carry

何  

Hé

surname He

Most common words with 何
Freq.
Word
Meaning

任何

any

如何

how

为何

why

何

what

何时

when

Component uses

Sound component in 1 character (0 verified)

荷

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[g]ˤaj

ha

hé

what


Statistics

HSK level 3

Appears in 94.4258% of movies

218th most common character in movies

229th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

7

Unicode

U+4F55

Shuowen

“何，儋也。从人，可聲。”


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