弔
diào HSK6

condole

Original meaning: silk streamers used for arrows

Depicts a person carrying silk streamers used for wrapping around arrows with. Based on the original meaning "silk streamers used for arrows", now written as 繳. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components

◎
◎ Iconic component
characterless component

Depicts silk streamers used for wrapping around arrows with.

人
人 Iconic component
rén, ren person
Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 人 than it was in ancient scripts.

Character Evolution

Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Shang ~1100 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Shang ~1100 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Mid Western Zhou ~900 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Spring and Autumn ~700 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Spring and Autumn ~500 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Warring States 475-221 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Warring States ~400 BC
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 Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Component uses

Sound (0 of 1 verified)

伄

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagarttektˤ[i]wk arrive
tewHtˤ[e]wk-s grieved; condole

說文解字

《說文》：“弔，問終也。古之葬者，厚衣之以薪，从人持弓，會敺禽。”

Sources

Character origin
季旭昇《說文新證》p.639-640黃德寬《古文字譜系疏證》p.838-839
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)