yuē, yāo
agreement
Original meaning:
bind
Phonosemantic compound. 糹 represents the meaning and 勺 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "bind". The meaning later shifted to "agreement", "restrain", "keep under control", "appointment", and "approximately".
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[q]ewk-s | 'jiewH | yào | bond, agreement (n.) |
*[q](r)ewk | 'jak | yuē | bind (v.), make an agreement |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 73.9068% of movies
322nd most common character in movies
424th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+7D04 |
Shuowen | “約,纏束也。从糸,勺聲。” |
Sources
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