含 - Dong Chinese dictionary

hán

contain, hold in mouth

Phonosemantic compound. 口 represents the meaning and 今 represents the sound.

Components

jīn

now

含 and 今 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.含 /*Cə-m-kˤ[ə]m/, /*Cə-m-[k]ˤ[ə]m-s/
今 /*[k]r[ə]m/

口 Meaning component

kǒu

mouth

Evolution

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

含

hán

hold in mouth; cherish; contain; to keep; to contain; to suck (keep in your mouth without chewing)

Most common words with 含

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	含	to keep
	含量	content
	含有	to contain
	含义	hint
	包含	to contain

Component uses

Meaning component in 1 character (0 verified)

唅

Sound component in 5 characters (0 verified)

颔頷晗焓唅

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*Cə-m-kˤ[ə]m	hom	hán	hold in the mouth
*Cə-m-[k]ˤ[ə]m-s	homH	hán	to put in the mouth

Statistics

HSK level 4

Appears in 19.5579% of movies

1604th most common character in movies

937th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	7
Unicode	U+542B
Shuowen	“含，嗛也。从口，今聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Meaning