zhōng
clock
Phonosemantic compound. 金 represents the meaning and 童 represents the sound.
Evolution

Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 鐘
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
minute | ||
clock | ||
alarm clock | ||
hour | ||
love at first sight (idiom) |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*toŋ | tsyowng | zhōng | bell |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 73.7947% of movies
460th most common character in movies
905th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 20 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+9418 |
Shuowen | “鐘,樂鐘也。秋分之音,物穜成。从金,童聲。古者垂作鐘。銿,鐘或从甬。” |
Sources
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