carpenter's square

Depicts a person (/) holding a tool (). also represents the sound.

Components
夫 iconic component

  Iconic component

  

man

Depicts a person. Modern form looks like .

巨 sound,iconic component

  Sound Iconic component

  

large

Depicts a carpenter's square.

Evolution

矩 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
矩 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
矩 Clerical script Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)

Clerical script

Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)
矩 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

carpenter's square, ruler, rule; carpenter's square; rule; regulation; pattern; to carve

() 

variant of [jǔ]

Most common words with 矩
Freq.
Word
Meaning

规矩

rule

矩阵

array

rule

扭矩

torque

循规蹈矩

to act according to convention

Component uses

Meaning component in 1 character (0 verified)

Sound component in 1 character (0 verified)

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[k]ʷ(r)aʔ

kjuX

carpenter's square


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 17.8440% of movies

1584th most common character in movies

2160th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

9

Unicode

U+77E9

Shuowen

“巨,規巨也。从工,象手持之。榘,巨或从木、矢,矢者,其中正也。,古文巨。”
Sources

季旭昇《說文新證》p.383

黃德寬《古文字譜系疏證》p.1388-1389



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