愛 — Edit Snapshot — Chinese Character Wiki

ài HSK1

love

approved by inralback19 · Jan 12, 2026, 11:02 PM

i think hanziyuan was correct at this

Changed fields: components

Originally a phonosemantic compound, with 旡 representing the sound and 心 (heart) representing the meaning. Later the 夂 component was added.

Components

兂 Sound component

Change in sound

愛 and 兂 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.

Change in form

Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 兂 than it was in ancient scripts.

心 Meaning component

夂 Unknown component

夂 is a component form of 止. The purpose of this component is unclear.

Regular Modern

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	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	'ojH	[q]ˤə[p]-s	to love; to grudge (< ‘draw close to oneself’?)

《說文》：“愛，行皃。从夊，聲。”