法 - Dong Chinese dictionary

fǎ

law

Phonosemantic compound. 氵 represents the meaning and 去 represents the sound. Originally written as 灋.

Components

氵 Meaning component

shui, shuǐ

water

Likely alludes to water always flowing in a given path, or water always being flat and level.

去 Sound component

qù

go away

法 and 去 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.法 /*[p.k]ap/
去 /*[kʰ](r)aʔ/, /*[k]ʰ(r)ap-s/

Evolution

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

法

fǎ

law, rule, regulation, statute; France, French; law; method; way; Buddhist teaching; Legalist

法

Fǎ

France; French; abbr. for 法國|法国[Fǎguó]; Taiwan pr. [Fà]

法 (㳒)

fǎ

variant of 法[fǎ]

法 (灋)

fǎ

old variant of 法[fǎ]

Most common words with 法

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	无法	unable
	办法	means
	方法	method
	法	law
	法律	law

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*[p.k]ap	pjop	fǎ	model, law

Statistics

HSK level 4

Appears in 97.5653% of movies

139th most common character in movies

65th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	8
Unicode	U+6CD5
Shuowen	“灋，刑也。平之如水，从水；廌，所以觸不直者，去之，从去。法，今文省。佱，古文。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Freq.

Word

Meaning