雖 - Dong Chinese dictionary

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简体

繁體

pīnyīn

ㄅㄆㄇㄈ

suī

although

Original meaning:

type of lizard

Phonosemantic compound. 虫 represents the meaning and 唯 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "type of lizard". The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components

虫 Meaning component

chóng

bug, insect

虫 hints at the original meaning of 雖, "type of lizard", which is no longer the most common meaning of 雖 in modern Mandarin.

唯 Sound component

wéi, wěi

only

雖 and 唯 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.雖 /*s-qʷij/
唯 /*ɢʷij (< *ɢʷuj?)/

Evolution

雖 Bronze script Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)

Bronze script

Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)

雖 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

雖 Clerical script Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)

Clerical script

Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

suī

although, even if; although; even though

Most common words with 雖

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	虽然	although
	虽	although
	虽说	though
	虽是	although
	虽则	nevertheless

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*s-qʷij	swij	suī	although; even if

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 48.3421% of movies

937th most common character in movies

504th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	17
Simplified	虽
Unicode	U+96D6
Shuowen	“雖，似蜥蜴而大。从虫，唯聲。”

Sources

Academia Sinica

Make Me a Hanzi

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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