hòu
behind
Depicts someone's foot (夂) being held back by a rope (幺), preventing them from being able to walk (彳) forward.
Components
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 |
*[ɢ]ˤ(r)oʔ | huwX | hòu | after |
*[ɢ]ˤ(r)oʔ-s | huwH | hòu | put after ? |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 99.5996% of movies
75th most common character in movies
48th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+5F8C |
Shuowen | “後,遲也。从彳幺夊者,後也。,古文後从辵。” |
Sources
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