tūn​ná

tuna

tūn swallow

Phonosemantic compound. represents the meaning and represents the sound.

Components

Meaning component
kǒu, kou mouth
Sound component
tiān, tian sky

Character Evolution

Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Three Kingdoms (Cao Wei) 222-280 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagartthenl̥ ˤən(surname)
thonl̥ ˤənto swallow
Zhengzhangqʰl'iːn
qʰl'ɯːn
Unicodetən

說文解字

咽也。从口天聲。

Sources

Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-SagartZhengzhang Shangfang
Historical images
Academia Sinica

take

Originally written as a hand () taking an object. Later written as with the phonetic component added. Later the component was corrupted to .

Components

Sound component
slave

Later corrupted to the visually similar character .

Meaning component
shǒu, shou hand

Component uses

Sound (0 of 1 verified)

Historical Pronunciations

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫
Readings & variants
Unicode