jīng
pass through
Original meaning:
warp thread
Originally written 巠, which depicts weaving vertical (warp) threads on a loom. The 糹 (thread) component was added later. Based on the original meaning "warp thread". The meaning later expanded to "pass through", "regulate", and "classic books".
Components
Evolution

Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*k-lˤeŋ | keng | jīng | loom; regulate; norm |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 99.5355% of movies
97th most common character in movies
62nd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 13 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+7D93 |
Shuowen | “經,織也。从糸,巠聲。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.804
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

