cóng
from
Originally a pictograph of one person following another (从). Later the 彳 and 止 components were added to indicate movement.
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 |
*[dz]oŋ | dzjowng | cóng | to follow |
*tsoŋ | tsjowng | zōng | longitudinal |
*[dz]oŋ-s | dzjowngH | zòng | follower |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 99.4554% of movies
119th most common character in movies
98th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 11 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+5F9E |
Shuowen | “從,隨行也。从辵,从从,从亦聲。” |
Sources
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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