hēi
black
Pictograph of a person whose face has been tattooed. In ancient China criminals were punished by having their faces permanently marked. Later writers reanalyzed the character as a chimney being blackened by fire, so the bottom component was written to look like 炎 (flame).
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
Component uses
Iconic component in 1 character (1 verified)
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*m̥ˤək (dialect *m̥ˤ- > xˤ-) | xok | hēi | black |
Statistics
HSK level 2
Appears in 62.2938% of movies
508th most common character in movies
519th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 12 |
Unicode | U+9ED1 |
Shuowen | “黑,火所熏之色也。从炎上出囦。囦古字。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.760
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