Chinese Character Wiki
該

gāi

should

Phonosemantic compound. 言 represents the meaning and 亥 represents the sound.

Components
言 meaning component

言  Meaning component

yán

  

speech

亥 sound component

亥  Sound component

hài

  

12th terrestrial branch

Evolution

該 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
該 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
該 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

该 (該) 

gāi

should, ought to, need to; should; ought to; probably; must be; to deserve; to owe; to be sb's turn to do sth; that; the above-mentioned

Most common words with 該
Freq.
Word
Meaning

该

should

应该

ought to

该死

Damn it!

不该

should not

活该

ought

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[k]ˤə

koj

gāi

all, complete


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 99.6636% of movies

95th most common character in movies

319th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

13

Simplified

该

Unicode

U+8A72

Shuowen

“該，軍中約也。从言，亥聲。讀若‘心中滿該’。”


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