shèng
sage, holy
Simplified form of 聖. Depicts listening (耳) to what is spoken (口). 𡈼 represents the sound.
Components
又 Simplified component
yòu
(hand), again
Shorthand for the 耳 component in the traditional character 聖.
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Seal script
Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 圣
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
Christmas | ||
holy | ||
Christmas time | ||
Father Christmas | ||
divine |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*l̥eŋ-s | syengH | shèng | sage (n.) |
*kʰuːd | kʰuət̚ | kū | to dig |
Statistics
HSK level 6
Appears in 46.1317% of movies
541st most common character in movies
960th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 5 |
Traditional | |
Unicode | U+5723 |
Shuowen | “圣,汝潁之閒,謂致力於地曰圣。从土,从又。” |
Sources
Zhengzhang Shangfang
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

