睪 - Dong Chinese dictionary

yì

spy on

Phonosemantic compound. 目 represents the meaning and a remnant of 射 represents the sound.

Components

目 Iconic component

mù

eye

Depicts an eye spying.

射 Sound Remnant component

shè

shoot

Modern form looks like 幸. Originally the 矢 in 射.

睪 and 射 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.睪 /*laːɡ/
射 /*Cə.lAk-s/, /*Cə.lAk/

Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 射 than it was in ancient scripts.

Evolution

Bronze script

Early Warring States (~400 BC)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

𠬤 (睪)

yì

spy on

睪

yì

to spy out

Component uses

Sound component in 7 characters (4 verified)

釋澤擇譯繹驛嶧

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*laːɡ	jiᴇk̚	yì	spy on [Zhengzhang]

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

7464th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	13
Simplified	𠬤
Unicode	U+776A
Shuowen	“睪，目視也。从橫目，从，令吏將目捕罪人也。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

季旭昇《說文新證》p.773-774

劉釗《古文字構形學》p.87-88

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