yǎn
perform
Original meaning:
flow out
Phonosemantic compound. 氵 represents the meaning and 寅 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "flow out". The meaning later shifted to "spread", "develop", and "perform".
Components
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Seal script
Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*N-q(r)anʔ | yenX | yǎn | flow out, extend |
Statistics
HSK level 3
Appears in 62.4219% of movies
315th most common character in movies
715th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 14 |
Unicode | U+6F14 |
Shuowen | “演,長流也。一曰水名。从水,寅聲。” |
Sources
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