jīng
startle, frighten
Phonosemantic compound. 馬 represents the meaning and 敬 represents the sound.
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 驚
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
nice surprise | ||
amazed | ||
to startle | ||
to be startled | ||
to shock |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*kreŋ | kjaeng | jīng | be afraid |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 65.8337% of movies
653rd most common character in movies
659th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 22 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+9A5A |
Shuowen | “驚,馬駭也。从馬,敬聲。” |
Sources
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