yuàn, yuán
beauty
Phonosemantic compound. 女 represents the meaning and 爰 represents the sound.
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
Clerical script
Western Jin dynasty (266-316 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 媛
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
beautiful (woman) | ||
debutante | ||
Peng Liyuan (1962-), PRC folk music singer, wife of Xi Jinping 習近平|习近平[XíJìnpíng] | ||
also called 大S | ||
to be interwoven |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[ɢ]ʷra[n]-s | hjwenH | yuàn | a beauty |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 0.2563% of movies
2875th most common character in movies
4078th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 12 |
Unicode | U+5A9B |
Shuowen | “媛,美女也,人所援也。从女,从爰。爰,引也。《詩》曰:‘邦之媛兮。’” |
Sources
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