qiǎn, jiān
shallow
Phonosemantic compound. 氵 represents the meaning and 戔 represents the sound.
Components
Evolution

Bronze script
Late Spring and Autumn (~500 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 淺
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
shallow | ||
skin-deep | ||
to run aground | ||
superficial | ||
light color |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[tsʰ]e[n]ʔ | tshjenX | qiǎn | shallow |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 8.5055% of movies
2136th most common character in movies
1721st most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 11 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+6DFA |
Shuowen | “淺,不深也。从水,戔聲。” |
Sources
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