怪 - Dong Chinese dictionary

guài

strange

Phonosemantic compound. 忄 represents the meaning and 圣 represents the sound.

Components

忄 Meaning component

xin, xīn

heart

忄 is a component form of 心.

圣 Sound component

shèng

sage, holy

怪 and 圣 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.怪 /*[k]ʷˤrə-s/, /*kruːds/
圣 /*l̥eŋ-s/, /*kʰuːd/

Evolution

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

怪

guài

strange, unusual, peculiar; bewildering; odd; strange; uncanny; devil; monster; to wonder at; to blame; quite; rather

怪 (恠)

guài

variant of 怪[guài]

Most common words with 怪

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	怪	odd
	奇怪	strange
	怪物	monster
	难怪	(it's) no wonder (that...)
	古怪	eccentric

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*[k]ʷˤrə-s	kweajH	guài	extraordinary
*kruːds	kˠuɛiH	guài	[Zhengzhang] extraordinary

Statistics

HSK level 4

Appears in 80.7144% of movies

404th most common character in movies

775th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	8
Unicode	U+602A
Shuowen	“怪，異也。从心，圣聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

Zhengzhang Shangfang

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Meaning