魔
mó HSK7

demon

Phonosemantic compound. 鬼 represents the meaning and 麻 represents the sound.

Components

麻
麻 Sound component
má, ma hemp
鬼
鬼 Meaning component
guǐ ghost

Character Evolution

Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Old Chinese
Zhengzhangmaːl

說文解字

《說文新附》:“魔,鬼也。从鬼,麻聲。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Zhengzhang Shangfang
Historical images
Academia Sinica