shàn
good
Composed of two 言 (speech) components and 羊 (sheep). In ancient China sheep (羊) were associated with goodness and beauty, which is why 羊 is a component in characters like 美 (beautiful), 善 (benevolent), and 義 (justice).
Evolution
Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
shàn
good, virtuous, charitable, kind; good (virtuous); benevolent; well-disposed; good at sth; to improve or perfect
Most common words with 善
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
to make better | ||
excellent | ||
benevolent | ||
benevolent | ||
good and honest |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[g]e[n]ʔ | dzyenX | shàn | good |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 39.3881% of movies
979th most common character in movies
749th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 12 |
Unicode | U+5584 |
Shuowen | “譱，吉也。从誩，从羊。此與義、美同意。，篆文从言。” |
Sources
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