jié
hero
Original meaning:
to be elevated
Originally written as 桀, which depicts two feet (舛) on top of a tree (木). 亻 (person) was later added to the character as a meaning component. Based on the original meaning, "to be elevated". The meaning later shifted to "outstanding person" and "hero".
Components
Evolution

Seal script
Chu (Warring States: 475-221 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Seal script
Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 傑
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
Jack (name) | ||
hero | ||
outstanding | ||
Jay Chou (1979-), Taiwanese pop star | ||
Jackson (name) |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*N-[k]<r>at | gjet | jié | remarkable; hero |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 24.3953% of movies
513th most common character in movies
1129th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 12 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+5091 |
Shuowen | “傑,傲也。从人,桀聲。” |
Sources
黃德寬《古文字譜系疏證》p.2404
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