略 - Dong Chinese dictionary

lüè

outline, approximately

Original meaning:

demarcate land boundaries

Phonosemantic compound. 田 represents the meaning and 各 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "demarcate land boundaries". The meaning later shifted to "outline" and "approximately".

Components

田 Meaning component

tián

field

田 hints at the original meaning of 略, "demarcate land boundaries", which is no longer the most common meaning of 略 in modern Mandarin.

各 Sound component

gè

each

略 and 各 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.略 /*[r]ak/
各 /*kˤak/

Evolution

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)

Clerical script

Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

略

lüè

approximately, roughly; outline; plan; strategy; summary; slightly; rather; to rob; to plunder; to summarize; to omit

略 (畧)

lüè

variant of 略[lüè]

Most common words with 略

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	战略	strategy
	策略	strategy
	忽略	to neglect
	略	plan
	侵略	invasion

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*[r]ak	ljak	lüè	draw a boundary; outline

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 22.2649% of movies

1454th most common character in movies

704th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	11
Unicode	U+7565
Shuowen	“略，經略土地也。从田，各聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Original meaning:

Freq.

Word

Meaning