Chinese Character Wiki
蠱

gǔ

poison

Depicts poisonous insects (蟲) placed in a container (皿). Alludes to the practice of cultivating poisonous insects inside a container by letting all of the insects devour each other until one poisonous insects remains to use as poison.

Components
蟲 iconic component

蟲  Iconic component

chóng

  

insects

Used here to depict poisonous insects.

皿 iconic component

皿  Iconic component

mǐn

  

dish

Evolution

蠱 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
蠱 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
蠱 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
蠱 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

蛊 (蠱) 

gǔ

poison; venom; harm; bewitch; arch. legendary venomous insect; to poison; to bewitch; to drive to insanity; to harm by witchcraft; intestinal parasite

Most common words with 蠱
Freq.
Word
Meaning

蛊

to poison

蛊惑

to poison

蛊惑人心

to resort to demagogy

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[k]ˤaʔ

kuX

gǔ

noxious vermin


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

3808th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

23

Simplified

蛊

Unicode

U+8831

Shuowen

“蠱，腹中蟲也。《春秋》傳曰：‘皿蟲為蠱。’晦淫之所生也。臬桀死之鬼亦為蠱。从蟲、从皿。皿，物之用也。”


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons License