jiàn, jiān
gradually
Phonosemantic compound. 氵 represents the meaning and 斬 represents the sound.
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 漸
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
gradually | ||
gradually | ||
gradual | ||
more (or better etc) with each passing day | ||
in sequence, step by step (idiom); to make steady progress incrementally |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[ts]am | tsjem | jiān | moisten |
*[dz]amʔ | dzjemX | jiàn | gradually; advance |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 10.8602% of movies
1846th most common character in movies
870th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 14 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+6F38 |
Shuowen | “漸,水。出丹陽黟南蠻中,東入海。从水,斬聲。” |
Sources
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