都
dōudūDū HSK1

metropolis

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approved by Peter Olson · Mar 2, 2026, 05:21 AM · Reviewed by Peter Olson on Mar 2, 2026, 05:21 AM

fixed strokes for traditional variant

Changed fields: fragmentsTrad

Phonosemantic compound. ⻏ represents the meaning and 者 represents the sound. Based on the meaning "large city, capital", which is the meaning when pronounced "dū". When pronounced "dōu", it has the unrelated meaning "all", etymologically related to 多 (many).

Components

者
者 Sound component
zhě one who...
Change in sound
⻏
⻏ Meaning component
yì city

⻏ is a component form of 邑.

Character Evolution

Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Spring and Autumn 771-476 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Mid Spring and Autumn ~600 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Spring and Autumn ~500 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 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 Western Han 202 BC-9 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
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagarttutˤa capital city

說文解字

有先君之舊宗廟曰都。从邑者聲。周禮：距國五百里爲都。

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)