fán
all
Original meaning:
tray
Depicts a wide and flat object such as a tray or plate, now written as 槃. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
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
Most common words with 凡
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
ordinary | ||
commonplace | ||
out of the ordinary | ||
every | ||
everything |
Component uses
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[b]rom | bjom | fán | in every case |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 17.2513% of movies
1538th most common character in movies
1013th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 3 |
Unicode | U+51E1 |
Shuowen | “凡,最括也。从二。二,偶也。从ㄋ。ㄋ,古文及。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.905-906
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