shén, shèn
extremely
Original meaning:
very peaceful and happy
Depicts putting something sweet in the mouth (甘) with a spoon. Based on the original meaning "very peaceful and happy". The meaning later shifted to "excessive" "extremely".
Components
Evolution

Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)Regular script
ModernComponent uses
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[t.ɢ][ə]mʔ | dzyimX | shèn | excessive, very |
*[t.ɢ][ə]mʔ-s | dzyimH | shèn | excessive |
Statistics
HSK level 4
Appears in 58.4174% of movies
778th most common character in movies
626th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Unicode | U+751A |
Shuowen | “甚,尤安樂也。从甘,从匹。耦也。,古文甚。” |
Sources
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