美
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Translingual
Stroke order (Japan) | |||
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Stroke order | |||
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Han character
美 (radical 123, 羊+3, 9 strokes, cangjie input 廿土大 (TGK), four-corner 80431, composition ⿱𦍌大)
Descendants
References
- KangXi: page 951, character 10
- Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 28435
- Dae Jaweon: page 1393, character 17
- Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 5, page 3126, character 5
- Unihan data for U+7F8E
Chinese
simp. and trad. |
美 | |
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variant forms | 媄 羙 |
Glyph origin
Characters in the same phonetic series (美) (Zhengzhang, 2003) | |
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Old Chinese | |
美 | *mriʔ |
渼 | *mriʔ |
媄 | *mriʔ |
Pictogram (象形) : 羊 (“goat, sheep or feathers”) + 大 (“person”) – a person with a headdress of feathers or ram's horn; sometimes considered as an ideogrammic compound (會意).
Etymology
From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mway (“beautiful, well, perfectly”) (STEDT).
According to Schuessler (2007), cognate with Mizo mawi (“beautiful, lovely”), Jingpho moi (“perfectly, beautifully”) as well as Karbi me- (“be good”) and Jingpho t͡ʃə³³-mai³³ (“good”); the former two items from *moy "beautiful" and the latter from *may "good, well", which were two roots reconstructed separately by Benedict (1972).
Pronunciation
Definitions
美
- beautiful; pretty; attractive; good-looking
- delicious; tasty; flavoursome
- good; fine; satisfactory; happy
- to beautify; to prettify
- to praise; to commend
- (dialectal) to be pleased with oneself
- beautiful things; beauty
- Short for 美洲 (Měizhōu, “America (continent)”).
- Short for 美國/美国 (Měiguó, “United States of America”).
- A surname. Mei
Compounds
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Japanese
Readings
Compounds
Korean
Hanja
美 • (mi) (hangeul 미, McCune–Reischauer mi, Yale mi)
- the USA, the Americas (in compounds, in news media)
- beautiful
Vietnamese
Han character
美: Hán Việt readings: mỹ[1][2], mĩ[3]
美: Nôm readings: mẻ[2][3][4], mẹ[1][2], mỹ[1][2], mẽ[1][4], mỉa[1][4], mở[1], mỉ[3], mĩ[4]
References
- Nguyễn (2014).
- Nguyễn et al. (2009).
- Trần (2004).
- Taberd & Pigneau de Béhaine (1838).