Chinese Character Wiki

竊

qiè

secretly

Termites 禼 taking grain 米 to their nest 穴

Components
穴 meaning component

穴  Meaning component

xué

  

cave

米 meaning component

米  Meaning component

mǐ

  

rice

禼 meaning component

禼  Meaning component

  

Evolution

竊 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
竊 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
竊 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

窃 (竊) 

qiè

secretly, stealthily; steal; thief; to steal; secretly; (humble) I

Most common words with 竊
Freq.
Word
Meaning

盗窃

to steal

窃

to steal

偷窃

to steal

窃听器

bug

窃听

to eavesdrop

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[tsʰ]ˤet

tshet

qiè

steal


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 14.8807% of movies

1556th most common character in movies

2103rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

22

Simplified

窃

Unicode

U+7ACA

Shuowen

“竊，盜自中出曰竊。从穴、从米，、廿皆聲。廿，古文疾；，古文偰。”


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