悲
bēi HSK5

sorrow

Phonosemantic compound. 心 represents the meaning and 非 represents the sound.

Components

非
非 Sound component
fēi not
心
心 Meaning component
xīn, xin heart

Character Evolution

Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
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

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagartpijprəj sad

說文解字

《說文》：“悲，痛也。从心，非聲。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)