kuì
ashamed
Phonosemantic compound. 忄 represents the meaning and 鬼 represents the sound. Simplified form of 媿.
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 愧
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
ashamed | ||
to be worthy of | ||
to feel guilty | ||
ashamed | ||
fully deserving, without any reservations (idiom); entirely worthy (of a title, honor etc) |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[k]ruj-s | kwijH | kuì | ashamed |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 11.2126% of movies
1987th most common character in movies
2275th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 12 |
Unicode | U+6127 |
Shuowen | “媿,慙也。从女,鬼聲。愧,媿或从恥省。” |
Sources
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

