Original meaning: leisure; carefree
Depicts a person with their hair loose. Based on the original meaning "leisure; carefree", now written as 佚. The meaning later shifted to "lose" and "fail".
Character Evolution
Component uses
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | syit | l̥i[t] | lose |
說文解字
《說文》：“失，縱也。从手，乙聲。”
Sources
- Character origin
- 何景成《甲骨文字詁林補編》p.26黃德寬《古文字譜系疏證》p.3349
- Readings & variants
- Unicode
- Historical pronunciations
- Baxter-Sagart
- Historical images
- Academia Sinica
- Etymology
- Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)
Depicts a person (大) with a horn (角) on their head, indicating an unbalanced single horn as opposed to a balanced pair of horns. 行 represents the sound. The meaning later shifted to "to weigh" and "measure".
Components
Character Evolution
Component uses
Sound (0 of 1 verified)
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | haeng | [g]ˤraŋ | beam of a steelyard |
說文解字
《說文》：“衡，牛觸，橫大木其角。从角，从大，行聲。《詩》曰：‘設其楅衡。’，古文衡如此。”
Sources
- Character origin
- 季旭昇《說文新證》p.366漢語多功能字庫
- Readings & variants
- Unicode
- Historical pronunciations
- Baxter-Sagart
- Historical images
- Academia Sinica
- Etymology
- Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)