奄
yǎnyān

to enclose

Original meaning: to cover

Phonosemantic compound. 盍 represents the meaning and 甲 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "to cover", now written as 掩.

Components

盍
盍 IconicRemnant component
hé what? why not?

Depicts a lid. Original form of 蓋.

甲
甲 Sound component
jiǎ, jia 1st heavenly stem, fingernail
Change in sound
Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 甲 than it was in ancient scripts.

Character Evolution

Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
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 Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Three Kingdoms (Cao Wei) 222-280 AD
Regular Modern

Component uses

Sound (1 of 15 verified)

掩淹俺庵阉腌鹌罨崦埯醃閹鵪殗唵

Meaning (1 of 4 verified)

掩庵腌醃

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagart'jemXʔ(r)omʔ cover

說文解字

《說文》：“奄，覆也。大有餘也。又欠也。从大，从申。申，展也。”

Sources

Character origin
陳劍《說“規”等字並論一些特別的形聲字意符》
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)