Chinese Character Wiki
眼

yǎn

eye

Phonosemantic compound. 目 represents the meaning and 艮 represents the sound.

Components
目 meaning component

目  Meaning component

mù

  

eye

艮 sound component

艮  Sound component

gěn, gèn

  

blunt

Evolution

眼 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
眼 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

眼  

yǎn

eye; eyelet, hole, opening; small hole; crux (of a matter); CL:隻|只[zhī],雙|双[shuāng]; classifier for big hollow things (wells, stoves, pots etc)

Most common words with 眼
Freq.
Word
Meaning

眼睛

eye

眼

eye

眼前

now

眼神

wink

眼泪

tears

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*ŋˤə[n]ʔ

ngonX

wěn

protrude as a knob

*[ŋ]ˤ<r>ə[n]ʔ

ngeanX

yǎn

eye


Statistics

HSK level 2

Appears in 83.8860% of movies

364th most common character in movies

281st most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

11

Unicode

U+773C

Shuowen

“眼，目也。从目，聲。”


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