bì
piece of jade with hole in it
Phonosemantic compound. 玉 represents the meaning and 辟 represents the sound.
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Late Spring and Autumn (~500 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 璧
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
jade annulus | ||
lit. to return the jade annulus to Zhao (idiom); fig. to return something intact to its rightful owner | ||
perfect pair | ||
harmonious combination of Chinese and Western elements (idiom) | ||
to match harmoniously |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*pek | pjiek | bì | circular jade insignium |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
3589th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 18 |
Unicode | U+74A7 |
Shuowen | “璧,瑞玉。圜也。从玉,辟聲。” |
Sources
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