zhèn
pronoun 'I'
Original meaning:
seal up a crack
Originally depicted two hands (廾) holding an object (丨) to patch up a hole in a boat (舟), representing the meaning "seal a crack". 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
Western Jin dynasty (266-316 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Component uses
Meaning component in 1 character (0 verified)
Remnant component in 1 character (1 verified)
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*lrəmʔ | drimX | zhèn | I, we, our |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
3054th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 10 |
Unicode | U+6715 |
Shuowen | “朕,我也。闕。” |
Sources
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