xī
inhale
Phonosemantic compound. 口 represents the meaning and 及 represents the sound.
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 吸
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
to attract (interest, investment etc) | ||
to breathe | ||
to breathe | ||
to absorb | ||
leech |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*qʰ(r)əp | xip | xī | inhale |
Statistics
HSK level 4
Appears in 59.5547% of movies
578th most common character in movies
924th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 6 |
Unicode | U+5438 |
Shuowen | “吸,內息也。从口,及聲。” |
Sources
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