céng, zēng
already
Pictograph of a cooking pot. Based on the original meaning "cauldron; cooking pot", now written as 甑. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[dz]ˤəŋ | dzong | céng | (adverb indicating past time) |
*[ts]ˤəŋ | tsong | zēng | remote (ancestor) |
Statistics
HSK level 4
Appears in 68.9092% of movies
588th most common character in movies
463rd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 12 |
Unicode | U+66FE |
Shuowen | “曾,詞之舒也。从八,从曰,聲。” |
Sources
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