yōu
secluded, remote
Phonosemantic compound. 山 represents the meaning and 𢆶 represents the sound.
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
yōu
quiet, secluded, tranquil; dark; remote; hidden away; secluded; serene; peaceful; to imprison; in superstition indicates the underworld; ancient district spanning Liaonang and Hebei provinces
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[ʔ](r)iw | 'jiw | yōu | dark; secluded |
Statistics
HSK level 5
Appears in 14.9768% of movies
1654th most common character in movies
1636th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Unicode | U+5E7D |
Shuowen | “幽,隱也。从山,中,亦聲。” |
Sources
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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