Chinese Character Wiki
顏

yán

face

Phonosemantic compound. 頁 represents the meaning and 彥 represents the sound.

Components
彥 sound component

彥  Sound component

yàn

  

elegant

頁 meaning component

頁  Meaning component

yè, xié

  

(head), page

Depicts a head.

Evolution

顏 Bronze script Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)

Bronze script

Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
顏 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

颜 (顏) 

yán

face, facial appearance; color; face; countenance

颜 (顏) 

Yán

surname Yan

Most common words with 顏
Freq.
Word
Meaning

颜色

color

颜

color

颜料

paint

颜面

face

容颜

mien

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*C.ŋˤrar

ngaen

yán

face, forehead

*C.ŋˤrar

ngaen

yán

surname


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 21.9446% of movies

1472nd most common character in movies

1545th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

18

Simplified

颜

Unicode

U+984F

Shuowen

“顏，眉目之閒也。从頁，彥聲。，籀文。”


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons License