Dīng Líng

Ding Ling

dīng cubes

Original meaning: city wall

In ancient scripts was written in two different ways: (1) depicting the walls of a city, which is now written as , or (2) depicting a nail, which is now written as .

Character Evolution

Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Spring and Autumn 771-476 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Spring and Autumn ~700 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Warring States ~400 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Qin 221-206 BC
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Component uses

Sound (14 of 24 verified)

Iconic (2)

Meaning (0 of 1 verified)

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagarttengtˤeŋ 4th heavenly stem
tengtˤeŋ nail (n.)
treangtˤreŋ sound of beating

說文解字

《說文》:“丁,夏時萬物皆丁實。象形。丁承丙,象人心。”

Sources

Character origin
季旭昇《說文新證》p. 962
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica

líng tinkling of jade

Phonosemantic compound. represents the meaning and represents the sound.

Components

Meaning component
wáng king
Sound component
lìng command

Character Evolution

Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld Chinese
Zhengzhangreːŋ
Unicodeleng

說文解字

玉聲。从玉令聲。

Sources

Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Zhengzhang Shangfang
Historical images
Academia Sinica