Phonosemantic compound. 欠, depicting a person with an open mouth, represents the meaning, while 谷 represents the sound.
Components
Character Evolution
Component uses
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | yowk | ɢ(r)ok | desire (v.) |
說文解字
《說文》：“欲，貪欲也。从欠，谷聲。”
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)
Pictograph of a crawling insect. The current meaning "seek" or "beg" is a phonetic loan.
Character Evolution
