xiàn
envy, desire
Depicts a person salivating (㳄) when seeing a tasty sheep (羊) that they have a desire to eat.
Evolution
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
Clerical script
Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 羨
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
to envy | ||
to envy | ||
to envy | ||
Ji Xianlin (1911-2009), Chinese linguist and Indologist | ||
to marvel at |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*s-N-qa[r]-s | zjenH | xiàn | covet, desire |
*s-[ɢ]a[n]-s | zjenH | xiàn | surplus, affluence |
*[ɢ]a[n] | yen | yán | extend; go forward |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 4.1166% of movies
2659th most common character in movies
2732nd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 13 |
Unicode | U+7FA8 |
Shuowen | “羨，貪欲也。从，从羑省。羑呼之羑，文王所拘羑里。” |
Sources
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