biàn, pián
convenience
Original meaning:
whip a person
Phonosemantic compound. 亻 represents the meaning and 𠓥 represents the sound. Originally written as 𠓥, which depicted a hand holding a whip with the 丙 component. Based on the original meaning "whip a person", now written as 鞭. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Components
Evolution

Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[b]e[n]-s | bjienH | biàn | comfortable; advantageous |
*[b]e[n] | bjien | pián | glib-tongued |
Statistics
HSK level 6
Appears in 77.3667% of movies
487th most common character in movies
271st most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Unicode | U+4FBF |
Shuowen | “便,安也。人有不便,更之。从人、更。” |
Sources
李学勤 《字源》 p.711
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