縣 - Dong Chinese dictionary

xiàn

county

Original meaning:

suspend, hang

Pictograph of a severed head (首) hanging on a rope (系) from a tree (木). Based on the original meaning "hang" or "suspend", now written as 懸. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components

首 Iconic component

shǒu

head

Depicts a severed head.

Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 首 than it was in ancient scripts.

木 Iconic component

mù

tree

Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 木 than it was in ancient scripts.

系 Iconic component

xì, jì

system

Depicts a rope.

Evolution

Bronze script

Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

县 (縣)

xiàn

county, district, subdivision; county

Most common words with 縣

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	县	county
	县政府	county administration
	县城	county seat
	县委	CPC county committee
	县级	county level

Component uses

Meaning component in 2 characters (0 verified)

懸纛

Sound component in 1 character (0 verified)

懸

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*Cə.[g]ʷˤe[n]-s	hwenH	xiàn	district
*[g]ʷˤe[n]	hwen	xuán	suspend

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 2.9793% of movies

2514th most common character in movies

877th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	16
Simplified	县
Unicode	U+7E23
Shuowen	“縣，繫也。从系持。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Original meaning:

Freq.

Word

Meaning