běn
root
Addition of a horizontal line toward the bottom of 木 (tree) to represent the roots of the tree.
Evolution
Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
běn
root, origin, source; basis; root; stem; origin; source; this; the current; original; inherent; originally; classifier for books, periodicals, files etc
Component uses
Meaning component in 1 character (1 verified)
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*C.pˤə[n]ʔ | pwonX | běn | tree trunk |
Statistics
HSK level 1
Appears in 96.1076% of movies
201st most common character in movies
92nd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 5 |
Unicode | U+672C |
Shuowen | “本，木下曰本。从木，一在其下。楍，古文。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.484-485
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