延 - Dong Chinese dictionary

yán

delay

Original meaning:

walk

Phonosemantic compound. 廴 represents the meaning and 正 represents the sound.

Components

正 Sound component

zhèng, zhēng

correct

延 and 正 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.延 /*la[n]/
正 /*C.teŋ/, /*teŋ-s/

Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 正 than it was in ancient scripts.

廴 Meaning component

yǐn

walk

Evolution

Bronze script

Late Spring and Autumn (~500 BC)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

延

yán

delay, postpone, defer; to prolong; to extend; to delay

延

Yán

surname Yan

Most common words with 延

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	延长	to prolong
	延续	to continue
	拖延	to delay
	延伸	to extend
	延	to prolong

Component uses

Meaning component in 1 character (0 verified)

埏

Sound component in 6 characters (4 verified)

蛋誕诞涎蜒筵

Remnant component in 1 character (1 verified)

蛋

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*la[n]	yen	yán	extend

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 19.3657% of movies

1563rd most common character in movies

1103rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	6
Unicode	U+5EF6
Shuowen	“延，長行也。从，丿聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

季旭昇《說文新證》p.135

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Original meaning:

Freq.

Word

Meaning