guǐ
ghost
Pictograph of a person (人) with the head of a ghost/demon (甶). 厶 was later added as a decorative mark.
Components
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
guǐ
ghost; spirit of dead; devil; demon; terrible; damnable; clever; sly; crafty; (suffix for sb with a certain vice or addiction etc); one of the 28 constellations
Component uses
Iconic component in 1 character (1 verified)
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*k-ʔujʔ | kjw+jX | guǐ | ghost |
Statistics
HSK level 5
Appears in 61.0604% of movies
470th most common character in movies
1042nd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Unicode | U+9B3C |
Shuowen | “鬼,人所歸為鬼。从人,象鬼頭。鬼陰氣賊害,从厶。,古文从示。” |
Sources
林志強《《文源》評注》p.4
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