bēn​xiàn

meet in person

bēn, bèn run fast

Depicts a running person () with more than one (foot) components to indicate faster movement. Similar in origin to .

Components

Iconic component
yāo, wò, wāi die young
SoundIconic component
bēn run fast

Depicted three feet.

Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to than it was in ancient scripts.

Character Evolution

Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Mid Western Zhou ~900 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Warring States ~250 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 Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Component uses

Sound (0 of 1 verified)

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagartpwonpˤur run (v.)

說文解字

《說文》:“奔,走也。从夭,賁省聲。與走同意,俱从夭。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫季旭昇《說文新證》p.768
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica

xiàn appear Simplified

Simplified form of . Etymologically related to (to see). Originally these two characters were written the same, then the 𤣩 component was added to distinguish them.

Components

𤣩
jade

Distinguishes from .

SoundMeaning component
jiàn, xiàn, jian see

Sources

Character origin
Wiktionary
Readings & variants
Unicode

xiàn appear Traditional

Etymologically related to (to see). Originally these two characters were written the same, then the 𤣩 component was added to distinguish them.

Components

𤣩
jade

Distinguishes from .

SoundMeaning component
jiàn, xiàn, jian see

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-SagarthenHN-[k]ˤen-s appear

Sources

Character origin
Wiktionary
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart