愛 - Dong Chinese dictionary

ài

love

Originally a phonosemantic compound, with 旡 representing the sound and 心 (heart) representing the meaning. Later the 夂 component was added.

Components

旡 Sound component

jì

choke on something eaten

愛 and 旡 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.

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

心 Meaning component

xīn

heart

夂 Unknown component

zhǐ

夂 is a component form of 止. The purpose of this component is unclear.

Evolution

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Western Jin dynasty (266-316 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

爱 (愛)

ài

love, be fond of, like; to love; to be fond of; to like; affection; to be inclined (to do sth); to tend to (happen)

Most common words with 愛

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	爱	to love
	亲爱	dear
	可爱	adorable
	爱情	romance
	恋爱	(romantic) love

Component uses

Sound component in 4 characters (1 verified)

僾曖噯璦

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*[q]ˤə[p]-s	'ojH	ài	to love; to grudge (< ‘draw close to oneself’?)

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 95.7552% of movies

128th most common character in movies

394th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	13
Simplified	爱
Unicode	U+611B
Shuowen	“愛，行皃。从夊，聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Freq.

Word

Meaning