Chinese Character Wiki
衡

héng

measure

Depicts a person (大) with a horn (角) on their head, indicating an unbalanced single horn as opposed to a balanced pair of horns. 行 represents the sound. The meaning later shifted to "to weigh" and "measure".

Components
行 sound component

行  Sound component

xíng, háng

  

walk

角 iconic component

角  Iconic component

jiǎo, jué

  

horn

大 iconic component

大  Iconic component

dà, dài

  

big

Depicts a person.

Evolution

衡 Bronze script Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)

Bronze script

Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
衡 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
衡 Clerical script Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)

Clerical script

Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)
衡 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

衡  

héng

measure, weigh, judge, consider; to weigh; weight; measure

Most common words with 衡
Freq.
Word
Meaning

平衡

balance

衡量

to weigh

均衡

equal

失衡

to unbalance

抗衡

contend against

Component uses

Sound component in 1 character (0 verified)

蘅

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[g]ˤraŋ

haeng

héng

beam of a steelyard


Statistics

HSK level 6

Appears in 11.1805% of movies

1947th most common character in movies

1340th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

16

Unicode

U+8861

Shuowen

“衡，牛觸，橫大木其角。从角，从大，行聲。《詩》曰：‘設其楅衡。’，古文衡如此。”


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