bǎo
treasure
Depicts an assortment of valuable things, including jade (玉) and shells (貝), being stored safely under a roof (宀). The 缶 component represents the sound.
Components
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)Regular script
ModernHistorical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*pˤuʔ | pawX | bǎo | precious thing |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 67.4355% of movies
373rd most common character in movies
811th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 20 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+5BF6 |
Shuowen | “寶,珍也。从宀,从王,从貝,缶聲。寚,古文寶省貝。” |
Sources
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