jiǎn
letter
Original meaning:
condense, select
Two dots added to 束 (bind; bunch). Based on the original meaning "condense, select", now written as 揀. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Components
八 Distinguishing component
bā
eight
Evolution

Bronze script
Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Jin dynasty (266-420 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Component uses
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*kˤr[a]nʔ | keanX | jiǎn | select, distinguish |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 1.6178% of movies
2873rd most common character in movies
3047th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Unicode | U+67EC |
Shuowen | “柬,分別簡之也。从束,从八。八,分別也。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.512-513
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