甫
fǔ

begin

Original meaning: garden, orchard

Pictograph of something sprouting (屮) from a field (田), depicting a garden or orchard, now written as 圃. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components

父
父 SoundIconic component
fù father
Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 父 than it was in ancient scripts.
用
用 Iconic component
yòng, yong use
Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 用 than it was in ancient scripts.

Character Evolution

Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Mid Western Zhou ~900 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Spring and Autumn ~700 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 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 (6 of 19 verified)

捕铺辅浦哺脯埔圃匍莆補逋黼晡輔舖鋪旉尃

Iconic (2)

圃尃

Unknown (0 of 1 verified)

牖

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-SagartpjuXp(r)aʔ begin
pjuXpraʔ great

說文解字

《說文》：“甫，男子美稱也。从用、父，父亦聲。”

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)