Chinese Character Wiki
饮

yǐn, yìn

drink

Simplified form of 飲. Pictograph of a person with an open mouth (欠) drinking from a wine vessel (酉). 欠 also represents the sound. The 酉 (wine) component and the open mouth was later reanalyzed as 饣 (eat).

Components
饣 iconic component

饣  Iconic component

shí

  

eat

饣 is a component form of 食. Used here to depict an open mouth drinking from a wine vessel (酉). Later reanalyzed as 饣 (eat).

欠 sound,iconic component

欠  Sound Iconic component

qiàn

  

yawn, deficient

Depicts a person bending over with their mouth open.

Evolution

饮 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
饮 Bronze script Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)

Bronze script

Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)
饮 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
饮 Traditional script Modern

Traditional script

Modern
饮 Simplified script Modern

Simplified script

Modern
Definitions

饮 (飲) 

yǐn

drink; swallow; kind of drink; to drink

饮 (飲) 

yìn

to give (animals) water to drink

饮 (㱃) 

yǐn

old variant of 飲|饮[yǐn]

Most common words with 饮
Freq.
Word
Meaning

饮料

drink

饮食

diet

饮

to drink

餐饮

catering

饮酒

to drink wine

Statistics

HSK level 5

Appears in 19.2215% of movies

1570th most common character in movies

1569th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

7

Traditional

飲

Unicode

U+996E


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