fānpān

to take turns

Original meaning: 

animal's paw

Depicts an animal's claw () with their paw shown. also represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "animal's paw", now written as . The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components
釆 sound,iconic component

  Sound Iconic component

biàn

  

distinguish

Used here to depict an animal's claw.

◎ iconic component

  Iconic component

  

characterless component

Depicts an animal's paw. Modern form looks like unrelated .

Evolution

番 Bronze script Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)

Bronze script

Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
番 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
番 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
番 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

fān

to take turns; a turn, a time; to repeat; foreign (non-Chinese); barbarian; classifier for occurrences (of an event, action or speech utterance); classifier for iterations: times, -fold (as in twofold etc); classifier for situations: kind, sort

 

Pān

surname Pan

Most common words with 番
Freq.
Word
Meaning

barbarian

番茄

tomato

番茄酱

ketchup

轮番

in turn

翻番

to double

Component uses

Meaning component in 1 character (0 verified)

Sound component in 10 characters (3 verified)