special

Original meaning: 

bull

Phonosemantic compound. represents the meaning and represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "bull". The meaning later shifted to "prominent" and "special".

Components
牛 meaning component

  Meaning component

niú

  

cow

寺 sound component

  Sound component

  

temple

Evolution

特 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
特 Clerical script Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)

Clerical script

Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)
特 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
特 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

special, unique, distinguished; special; unique; distinguished; especially; unusual; very; abbr. for 特克斯[tè​kè​sī], tex

Most common words with 特
Freq.
Word
Meaning

特别

especially

special

特殊

special

特点

trait

模特

(fashion) model (loanword)

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[d]ˤək

dok

bull


Statistics

HSK level 6

Appears in 87.6181% of movies

171st most common character in movies

173rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

10

Unicode

U+7279

Shuowen

“特,朴特,牛父也。从牛,寺聲。”


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