jiān
small
Original meaning:
kill
Depicts two weapons (戈) facing each other. Based on the original meaning "kill", now written as 殘. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Seal script
Chu (Warring States: 475-221 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernComponent uses
Meaning component in 1 character (0 verified)
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[dz]ˤa[n] | dzan | jiān | kill; cruel |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
6653rd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 8 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+6214 |
Shuowen | “戔,賊也。从二戈。《周書》曰:‘戔戔巧言。’” |
Sources
何琳儀《戰國古文字典:戰國文字聲系》p.1042
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

