tú
smear, spread, paint
Phonosemantic compound. 土 represents the meaning and 涂 represents the sound.
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*lˤa | du | tú | to plaster |
*lˤa | du | tú | road |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 21.6883% of movies
1505th most common character in movies
1735th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 13 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+5857 |
Shuowen | 《說文新附》:“塗,泥也。从土,涂聲。” |
Sources
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