begin

Original meaning: 

garden, orchard

Pictograph of something sprouting () from a field (), depicting a garden or orchard, now written as . The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components
屮 iconic component

  Iconic component

chè

  

sprout

田 iconic component

  Iconic component

tián

  

field

Evolution

甫 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
甫 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

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

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

begin; man, father; great; a distance of ten li; (classical) barely; just; just now

Most common words with 甫
Freq.
Word
Meaning

just

杜甫

Du Fu (712-770), great Tang dynasty poet

皇甫

two-character surname Huangfu

神甫

(spiritual) father

辜振甫

Koo Chen-fu (1917-2005), Taiwanese businessman and diplomat

Component uses

Sound component in 20 characters (6 verified)

Iconic component in 2 characters (2 verified)

Unknown component in 1 character (0 verified)

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*p(r)aʔ

pjuX

begin

*praʔ

pjuX

great


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 0.3524% of movies

2983rd most common character in movies

2152nd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

7

Unicode

U+752B

Shuowen

“甫,男子美稱也。从用、父,父亦聲。”


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