jìng
actually
Original meaning:
tattoo criminals on the face
Depicts a tattoo tool (辛) marking a person's (人) head as punishment for a crime. Based on the original meaning "tattoo criminals on the face", now written as 黥. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Components
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 竟
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
unexpectedly | ||
after all | ||
after all | ||
actually | ||
to have the impertinence |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[k]raŋʔ-s | kjaengH | jìng | end, in the end |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 46.9966% of movies
944th most common character in movies
706th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 11 |
Unicode | U+7ADF |
Shuowen | “竟,樂曲盡為竟。从音,从人。” |
Sources
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