nián
year
Pictograph of a person (人) harvesting grain (禾). The harvest season is a yearly event.
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*C.nˤi[ŋ] | nen | nián | harvest; year |
Statistics
HSK level 1
Appears in 96.9246% of movies
154th most common character in movies
45th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 6 |
Unicode | U+5E74 |
Shuowen | “年,穀孰也。从禾,千聲。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.574-575
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