買
mǎi HSK1

buy

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approved by Peter Olson · Mar 27, 2021, 02:13 PM · Reviewed by Peter Olson on Mar 27, 2021, 02:13 PM

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Changed fields: isVerified, components, customSources

Pictograph of money (貝) coming out of a netted bag (网).

Components

网
网 Iconic component
Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 网 than it was in ancient scripts.
貝
貝 Iconic component

Shells were used as currency in ancient China.


Character Evolution

Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Qin 221-206 BC
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-SagartmeaXmˤrajʔ buy

說文解字

《說文》：“買，市也。从网、貝。《孟子》曰：‘登壟斷而网市利。’”

Sources

Character origin
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)