guó
name of ancient feudal State in Shenxi and Hunan
Original meaning:
to fight a tiger
Depicts a hand (爫) and a hand holding a weapon (攴) fighting with a tiger (虎). The component 攴 was later reanalyzed as 寸 (hand). Based on the original meaning "to fight a tiger". The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Components
Evolution

Bronze script
Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Western Jin dynasty (266-316 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 虢
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
surname Guo | ||
lit. a short-cut to crush Guo (idiom); fig. to connive with sb to damage a third party, then turn on the partner |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[k]ʷˤrak | kwaek | guó | (place name) |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
4827th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 15 |
Unicode | U+8662 |
Shuowen | “虢,虎所攫畫明文也。从虎,寽聲。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.410
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