chéng
completed
Original meaning:
city
Depicts defending city walls (丁) with an axe (戌). 丁 also represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "city", now written as 城. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
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
Most common words with 成
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
to succeed | ||
to become | ||
success | ||
to complete | ||
to change into |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[d]eŋ | dzyeng | chéng | to become (v.i.) |
*m-[d]eŋ | dzyeng | chéng | to complete (tr. v) |
Statistics
HSK level 2
Appears in 98.9108% of movies
135th most common character in movies
59th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 6 |
Unicode | U+6210 |
Shuowen | “成,就也。从戊,丁聲。,古文成从午。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.963-964
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