多

See also 夛

Translingual

Stroke order

Phonosemantic interpretation

Old Chinese Initial /*t-/ lends semantic value Straight. Final consonant /*-r/ lends semantic value Continuum. Oracle bone script style is a doubling of 肉 flesh → much meat in a tall, neat pile → many. Source: Howell & Morimoto

Etymology

Pictogram (象形) – two pieces of meat (⺼); the ⺼ components have been simplified to 夕.

The conventional explanation is that this represented the concept of "many" through visual repetition. However, the earliest oracle bones use 多 for both "many" and another word meaning "to separate," thus suggesting that 多 depicts a piece of meat cut in two. The word "to separate" was later written as 誃.

Han character

多 (radical 36 夕+3, 6 strokes, cangjie input 弓戈弓戈 (NINI), four-corner 2720₇, composition ⿱夕夕)

1. much, many
2. more than, over

Descendants

• タ

References

• KangXi: page 246, character 11
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 5756
• Dae Jaweon: page 489, character 6
• Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 2, page 862, character 2
• Unihan data for U+591A

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Cantonese

Hanzi

多 (Yale do1)

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Japanese

Kanji

多 (grade 2 “Kyōiku” kanji)

Readings

• On: た (ta)
• Kun: おおい (多い, ōi), まさる (masaru), まさに (masani)

Compounds

• 多分 (たぶん, tabun)

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Korean

Hanja

多 (hangeul 다, revised da, McCune-Reischauer ta)

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Mandarin

Pronunciation

• audio

  (file)

Hanzi

多 (pinyin duō (duo1), Wade-Giles to¹)

Compounds

• 多多益善

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Middle Chinese

Han character

多 (*dɑ)

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Min Nan

Hanzi

多 (POJ to (to¹))

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Vietnamese

Han character

多 (đa)