prisoner of war

Phonosemantic compound. represents the meaning and represents the sound. Originally written as , which depicts a hand () capturing a child ().

Components
亻 meaning component

  Meaning component

rén

  

person

is a component form of .

孚 sound component

  Sound component

  

captive

Evolution

俘 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
俘 Bronze script Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)

Bronze script

Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
俘 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
俘 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

prisoner of war; take as prisoner; to take prisoner

Most common words with 俘
Freq.
Word
Meaning

俘虏

captive

战俘

prisoner of war

俘获

to capture (enemy property or personnel)

to take prisoner

捕俘

to capture enemy personnel (for intelligence purposes)

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 3.5400% of movies

2411th most common character in movies

2057th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

9

Unicode

U+4FD8

Shuowen

“俘,軍所獲也。从人,孚聲。”


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