Chinese Character Wiki
故

gù

incident, happening, cause

Phonosemantic compound. 攵 represents the meaning and 古 represents the sound.

Components
古 sound component

古  Sound component

gǔ

  

old

攵 meaning component

攵  Meaning component

pū

  

tap

攵 is a component form of 攴.

Evolution

故 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
故 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
故 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
故 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

故  

gù

ancient, old; reason, because; happening; instance; reason; cause; intentional; former; old; friend; therefore; hence; (of people) to die, dead

Most common words with 故
Freq.
Word
Meaning

故事

narrative

事故

accident

故意

deliberately

故

happening

故障

malfunction

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*kˤa(ʔ)-s

kuH

gù

fact; reason

*kˤaʔ-s

kuH

gù

old (not new)


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 66.2502% of movies

577th most common character in movies

572nd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

9

Unicode

U+6545

Shuowen

“故，使為之也。从攴，古聲。”


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