壬
rén

9th heavenly stem

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approved by inralback19 · Feb 10, 2026, 11:26 PM · Reviewed by inralback19 on Feb 10, 2026, 11:26 PM

Rollback kFyYdjQrPCMjQHLNR

Changed fields: gloss, hint, customSources

Original meaning: thread spool

Depicts a spool of thread. The modern meaning "9th heavenly stem" is a phonetic loan.

Character Evolution

Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Mid Western Zhou ~900 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Mid Western Zhou ~900 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Mid Western Zhou ~900 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 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 Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagartnyimn[ə]m 9th heavenly stem

說文解字

《說文》：“壬，位北方也。陰極陽生，故《易》曰：‘龍戰于野。’戰者，接也。象人褢妊之形。承亥壬以子，生之敘也。與巫同意。壬承辛，象人脛。脛，任體也。”

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)