Chinese Character Wiki

吞

tūn

swallow

Phonosemantic compound. 口 represents the meaning and 天 represents the sound.

Components
口 meaning component

口  Meaning component

kǒu

  

mouth

天 sound component

天  Sound component

tiān

  

sky

Evolution

吞 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
吞 Clerical script Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)

Clerical script

Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)
吞 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
吞 Clerical script Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)

Clerical script

Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)
吞 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

吞  

tūn

swallow; absorb, annex, engulf; to swallow; to take

Most common words with 吞
Freq.
Word
Meaning

吞

to take

吞噬

to swallow

吞咽

to swallow

吞并

to annex

侵吞

to annex

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*l̥ˤən

then

tiān

(surname)

*l̥ˤən

thon

tūn

to swallow


Statistics

HSK level 6

Appears in 12.0455% of movies

1854th most common character in movies

1797th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

7

Unicode

U+541E

Shuowen

“吞，咽也。从口，天聲。”


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