yīng

eagle

Original meaning: chest; breast

Depicts a bird () with a mark to indicate the location of the chest, now written as . was later added to represent the sound. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components

Sound component
rén, ren person

Modern form looks like 广.

Change in sound
Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to than it was in ancient scripts.
Iconic component
characterless component

Mark to indicate the location of the chest.

Iconic component
zhuī, cuī, wéi bird

Character Evolution

Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Regular Modern

Component uses

Sound (5)

Meaning (2)

Simplified (1)

Historical Pronunciations

Old Chinese
Zhengzhangqɯŋ

說文解字

《說文》:“,鳥也。从隹,瘖省聲。或从人,人亦聲。,籀文从鳥。”

Sources

Character origin
陳靖《兩周古文字編注》p.240劉志基《中國漢字文物大系》Vol. 4, p.518
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Zhengzhang Shangfang
Historical images
Academia Sinica