ruò
weak
Original meaning:
urinate
Depicts two people urinating (尿). Based on the original meaning "urinate", now written as 尿/溺. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
ruò
weak; fragile, delicate; feeble; young; inferior; (following a decimal or fraction) slightly less than
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*newk | nyak | ruò | weak |
Statistics
HSK level 4
Appears in 33.4294% of movies
1174th most common character in movies
1038th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 10 |
Unicode | U+5F31 |
Shuowen | “弱,橈也,上象橈曲,彡象毛氂橈弱也。弱物并,故从二。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.705
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