Chinese Character Wiki
笑

xiào

smile

Phonosemantic compound. ⺮ represents the meaning and 夭 represents the sound.

Components
⺮ unknown component

⺮  Unknown component

zhú

  

bamboo

⺮ is a component form of 竹. The original connection of this component to "laugh" is unclear.

夭 sound component

夭  Sound component

yāo

  

die young

Evolution

笑 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

笑  

xiào

smile, laugh, giggle; snicker; laugh; smile; CL:個|个[gè]

笑 (咲) 

xiào

old variant of 笑[xiào]

Most common words with 笑
Freq.
Word
Meaning

笑

laugh

玩笑

to joke

微笑

smile

开玩笑

to play a joke

笑话

joke

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[s-l]aw-s

sjewH

xiào

to laugh


Statistics

HSK level 1

Appears in 83.6937% of movies

327th most common character in movies

346th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

10

Unicode

U+7B11

Shuowen

《說文新附》：“此字本闕。臣鉉等案：孫愐《唐韻》引《說文》云‘喜也，从竹，从犬’，而不述其義。今俗皆从犬。又案：李陽冰刊定《說文》‘从竹，从夭’，義云‘竹得風其體夭屈如人之笑’。未知其審。”


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