xùn
inquire
Depicts a mouth (口) interrogating a captured prisoner of war (卂). 卂 also represents the sound. The 口 (mouth) component was later reanalyzed as 言 (speech).
Components
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[s]i[n]-s | sinH | xùn | ask |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 20.2627% of movies
1353rd most common character in movies
1238th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 10 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+8A0A |
Shuowen | “訊,問也。从言,卂聲。,古文訊从卥。” |
Sources
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