借 - Dong Chinese dictionary

jiè

borrow

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

Components

亻 Meaning component

rén

person

亻 is a component form of 人.

昔 Sound component

xī

in the past, ancient times

借 and 昔 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.借 /*[ts]Ak-s/, /*[ts]Ak/
昔 /*[s]Ak/

Evolution

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

借

jiè

borrow; lend; make pretext of; to lend; to borrow; by means of; to take (an opportunity)

借 (藉)

jiè

variant of 借[jiè]

Most common words with 借

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	借	to lend
	借口	excuse
	凭借	to rely on
	借助	to draw support from
	借鉴	to draw on (others' experience)

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*[ts]Ak-s	tsjaeH	jiè	loan, borrow
*[ts]Ak	tsjek	jiè	loan, borrow

Statistics

HSK level 2

Appears in 44.4498% of movies

976th most common character in movies

984th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	10
Unicode	U+501F
Shuowen	“借，假也。从人，昔聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Freq.

Word

Meaning