xī
pity
Phonosemantic compound. 忄 represents the meaning and 昔 represents the sound.
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 惜
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
it is a pity | ||
to treasure | ||
not stint | ||
to cherish | ||
to regret |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[s]Ak | sjek | xī | regret; alas |
Statistics
HSK level 5
Appears in 27.6790% of movies
1395th most common character in movies
1512th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 11 |
Unicode | U+60DC |
Shuowen | “惜,痛也。从心,昔聲。” |
Sources
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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