衡
héng HSK6

measure

Depicts a person (大) with a horn (角) on their head, indicating an unbalanced single horn as opposed to a balanced pair of horns. 行 represents the sound. The meaning later shifted to "to weigh" and "measure".

Components

行
行 Sound component
xíng, háng walk
角
角 Iconic component
jiǎo, jué horn
大
大 Iconic component
dà, dài big

Depicts a person.

Character Evolution

Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Qin 221-206 BC
Regular Modern

Component uses

Sound (0 of 1 verified)

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagarthaeng[g]ˤraŋ beam of a steelyard

說文解字

《說文》:“衡,牛觸,橫大木其角。从角,从大,行聲。《詩》曰:‘設其楅衡。’,古文衡如此。”

Sources

Character origin
季旭昇《說文新證》p.366漢語多功能字庫
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica