妃
fēi

wife

Depicts a woman (女) and a man (卩) together.

Components

女
女 Iconic component
nǚ, nü woman
卩
卩 Iconic component
jié person kneeling
Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 卩 than it was in ancient scripts.

Character Evolution

Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Component uses

Sound (1)

配

Remnant (1)

配

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagartphj+jpʰ[ə][j] consort; match

說文解字

《說文》：“妃，匹也。从女，己聲。”

Sources

Character origin
季旭昇《說文新證》p.850-851
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)