líng
zero
Original meaning:
to fall (rain/snow)
Phonosemantic compound. 雨 represents the meaning and 令 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "to fall (of rain/snow)". The meaning later shifted to "scattered", "fraction", and "zero".
Evolution
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Jin dynasty (266-420 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
líng
zero; fragment, fraction; nought; zero sign; fractional; fragmentary; odd (of numbers); (placed between two numbers to indicate a smaller quantity followed by a larger one); fraction; (in mathematics) remainder (after division); extra; to wither and fall; to wither
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[r]ˤiŋ | leng | líng | fall (v., of rain) |
Statistics
HSK level 1
Appears in 22.6013% of movies
1409th most common character in movies
1342nd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 13 |
Unicode | U+96F6 |
Shuowen | “零，餘雨也。从雨，令聲。” |
Sources
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