Chinese Character Wiki
歌

gē

song

Originally depicted a man carrying an axe while singing. Now a phonosemantic compound. 欠 (pictograph of a person opening their mouth) represents the meaning and 哥 represents the sound.

Components
哥 sound component

哥  Sound component

gē

  

elder brother

Originally depicted an axe being carried. Later reanalyzed into phonetic component 哥.

欠 iconic component

欠  Iconic component

qiàn

  

yawn, deficient

Depicts a person opening their mouth.

Evolution

歌 Bronze script Late Spring and Autumn (~500 BC)

Bronze script

Late Spring and Autumn (~500 BC)
歌 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
歌 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
歌 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

歌  

gē

song, lyrics; sing, chant; praise; song; CL:支[zhī],首[shǒu]; to sing

歌 (謌) 

gē

variant of 歌[gē]

Most common words with 歌
Freq.
Word
Meaning

歌

song

歌曲

song

唱歌

to sing a song

歌手

singer

歌词

song lyric

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[k]ˤaj

ka

gē

sing, song


Statistics

HSK level 1

Appears in 41.7748% of movies

491st most common character in movies

1040th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

14

Unicode

U+6B4C

Shuowen

“歌，詠也。从欠，哥聲。謌，謌（歌）或从言。”


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