Chinese Character Wiki
寡

guǎ

widowed, alone

Original meaning: 

live alone

Depicts a person living alone in a house (宀). The decorative strokes around the 頁 component corrupted into the unrelated 分.

Components
宀 iconic component

宀  Iconic component

mián

  

roof

頁 iconic component

頁  Iconic component

yè, xié

  

(head), page

Used here to depict a person.

◎ unknown component

◎  Unknown component

  

characterless component

Originally depicted decorative strokes around 頁. Modern form looks like unrelated 分.

Evolution

寡 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
寡 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
寡 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
寡 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

寡  

guǎ

widowed; alone, friendless; few; scant

Most common words with 寡
Freq.
Word
Meaning

寡妇

widow

寡

few

优柔寡断

indecisive

寡人

I (first person pronoun used by royalty or nobility)

沉默寡言

reticent

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[C.k]ʷˤraʔ

kwaeX

guǎ

few


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 5.6383% of movies

2381st most common character in movies

2268th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

14

Unicode

U+5BE1

Shuowen

“寡，少也。从宀，从頒。頒，分賦也，故為少。”


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