任
rènRén HSK3

responsibility

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approved by cochleoid · Jun 9, 2022, 02:14 AM · Reviewed by cochleoid on Jun 9, 2022, 02:14 AM

Added the original meaning

Changed fields: originalMeaning, customSources

Original meaning: to hold in arms

Phonosemantic compound. 亻 represents the meaning and 壬 represents the sound.

Components

亻
亻 Meaning component
rén person

亻 is a component form of 人.

壬
壬 Sound component
rén 9th heavenly stem

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 Warring States ~250 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 Qin 221-206 BC
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 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
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-SagartnyimHn[ə]m-s burden; charge (n.)

說文解字

《說文》：“任，符也。从人，壬聲。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫The Outlier Linguistics Dictionary of Chinese Characters
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)