This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.
Welcome to the Gallery of interesting Han characters!
If you want to edit the gallery, go ahead! I don't mind.
(Note: all pronunciations are given in Standard Mandarin unless indicated otherwise, and all MC and OC reconstructions are Zhengzhang. Characters not in Unicode are represented using the "tofu" place holder symbol, □.)
乒乓 might be the most notable breakable Chinese characters, but they're certainly not the only breakable Chinese characters!
乒乓 - Ping pong! I'm sure most of us already know this one. Originally an onomatopoeia that was later used to refer specifically to this sport.
Pronunciation: pīngpāng
𩰋 and 𩰊 （separate halves of 鬥) - variants of 𠨭 (jú, “to hold, to drag”) and 丮 (jǐ, “to hold”) respectively.
Pronunciation: jú, jǐ / jí
彳亍 - "to walk slowly". Cognate with 躑躅 (OC *deɡ doɡ), 踟躕 (OC *de do), 躊躇 (OC *du da), all meaning "walking slowly or with difficulty → hesitant".
Pronunciation: chì chù
Pronunciation (Middle Chinese): ʈʰiᴇk̚ ʈʰɨok̚
Pronunciation (Old Chinese): tʰeɡ tʰoɡ
孑孓 (variant: 𡤼孒) - "mosquito larvae". The first character in isolation can also mean "lonely".
Pronunciation: jiéjué
Pronunciation (Cantonese): kit3 kyut3
Pronunciation (Middle Chinese): kˠiᴇt̚ kʉɐt̚
Pronunciation (Old Chinese): ked kʷad
曱甴 (similar to 甲由, which is sometimes used as a replacement, but with the top and bottom parts of the vertical stroke omitted) - another term for a kind of bug: the cockroach. This is a Cantonese dialectal term which used to be rather obscure to Mandarin speakers, until the end of roughly the 2010s when the Internet brought it to attention again, because of 1) the Hong Kong protests (when it became a derogatory slur for protesters) and 2) Internet personalities (mostly from the Mainland, I'm pretty sure) doing "how many characters can you create by adding one stroke to 日" challenges. Hokkien has a similar term pronounced "ka-choa̍h", "kǎ-choa̍h", or "ka-chōa", but it is more often written as 虼蚻. Ultimately, the term most likely originates from a Mon-Khmer substratum, like many terms exclusive to southern dialects. I've seen several attempts at Mandarin pronunciations, such as "yuēyóu", but none are satisfactory or widely accepted.
𠁣𠃛 (separate halves of 門) - another onomatopoeia, this time from the Hokkien dialect, and representing the sound of a door creaking. It can also mean "convoluted" or "not straightforward".
𰛄𰛅 (separate halves of 水) - yet another onomatopoeia, representing the sound of water splashing. The first character can also stand alone, pronounced as ā, with the meaning "sunken" and used in place names (similar to 凹).
Pronunciation: pàilài / pàilè
𠀫𠀪 (separate halves of 其) - "The sound produced when walking along Nining Rd in Hangzhou, used in place names." Now that's a bit... awfully specific, don't you say? It's also used in Vietnamese as chữ Nôm, but as a verb pronounced "khề khà" meaning "to have a drunken brawl".
Pronunciation: jīgé
Pronunciation (Wu): Good question
𬻍𬻌 - Breakable characters derived from 東, pronounced similarly to 叮咚 and likely also of onomatopoeic meaning. From the Huizhou dialect. (source: 《婺北麟清字汇》) Also used separately in Zhuang sawndip.
𡉅𡉆 (吉 with the bottom and top 一 in the 口 removed respectively, except the top is 土 instead of 士) - Shaanxi dialect. The dictionary it comes from says that it is pronounced like "⿰礻各喇", which isn't exactly helpful considering that the first character is equally obscure. (I'm going to hazard a guess that ⿰礻各 is a variant of 祫, which would make the equivalent Standard Mandarin reading "xiála".) Means "to sew, to patch, to mend".
□□ (猪 with the bottom and top 一 in the 日 removed respectively) - Shaanxi dialect. The Standard Mandarin reading would be "kèlóu". Means "piglet".
□□ (right and left halves of 非 respectively) - onomatopoeia for the sound of wings flapping
𪚥 (龍 x4) - variant of 讋／詟 (zhé, “talkative”). Notable for containing a whopping 64 strokes, although it's not the record holder.
Pronunciation: zhé
Pronunciation (Middle Chinese): t͡ɕiᴇp̚
Pronunciation (Old Chinese): ʔljob
𠔻 (興 x4) - it's uncertain what this character means. Notable for also containing 64 strokes.
Pronunciation: zhèng
𣡽 (林 x4, 木 x8) - the world record holder for most duplications of a character in a character. It's uncertain what this character means too.
Pronunciation: shā / qí
𰽔 (鏡 x4) - an unusual variant of the kanji 鏡 used by Kenji Miyazawa in his poem Iwate Keibin Tetsudō no Ichigatsu (岩手軽便鉄道の一月) from the poetry anthology Haru to Shura (春と修羅).
Pronunciation (Japanese): kagami
𡦪 (子 x6) - it's uncertain what this character means as well.
Pronunciation: jí
𱁬 (⿵䨺龘 or ⿱䨺龘; 雲 x3 + 龍 x3) An 85-stroke behemoth with essentially no usage outside of dictionaries, personal names, or business names. But that's still not the record holder...
Pronunciation: odoto when written in the shape of a pentagon, taito when written with 䨺 written directly on top of 龘
𤴐 (回 x2 sandwiched between 田 x4) - ancient form of 雷 (léi, “lightning”) with 32 strokes. Maybe with 雨 on top (𩇓): 40 strokes. Maybe just write 雷 4 times (䨻): 52 strokes. Maybe with 4 田 and 1 雨 above 3 口 and 3 田, for a total of 7 田 (□): 57 strokes. There are even attested variants consisting of 𤴐 or 𩇓 (the first two) repeated 4 times, for a grand total of 128 and 160 strokes!
𰻞 () - the notoriously complex 58-stroke (depending on which of the bajillion variants you consider authoritative) character found in the name of 𰻞𰻞麵, a.k.a. biangbiang noodles. They're from Shaanxi and they're delicious. But people can't seem to quite agree upon what the etymology or glyph origin is; there are almost as many hypotheses as there are variants to this character, some more tenable than others. Onomatopoeic, publicity or marketing stunt, a diner's creative way to get out of paying a bill, or even invention by a premier as early as the Qin Dynasty! (And then somehow getting ignored by almost all subsequent historic dictionaries?)
Pronunciation: biáng
𱟛 () - complex graphical variant of 賊, which means "thief". Notably used by the Tiandihui (Hongmen) secret society during the Qing Dynasty. To be honest, what probably really happened with "biang" (see above) is that the word for the noodle dish originated as a vernacular term without a real written form before one shop decided to just cobble together a new character with 𱟛 as the inspiration.
Pronunciation: zuí
Pronunciation (Taishanese): soih4
𨽴 (⿴𨺅⿳⿱龷一⿰个个⿰个个) - a variant of 隘 (ài, “narrow, confined, strategic, difficult to pass, to isolate, to block”) that does a good job pictographically representing its meaning.
鞥 - the only Chinese character to be pronounced "eng" in Mandarin. Means "reins".
Pronunciation: ēng
Pronunciation (Cantonese): ang1
Pronunciation (Middle Chinese): ʔʌŋ|ʔʌp̚
Pronunciation (Old Chinese): qɯːŋ / qɯːb
囧 - while not the only Chinese character to be pronounced "jiong" in Mandarin (which is still a quite unusual pronunciation), its face-like appearance has led to it becoming a sort of meme on the Chinese Internet.
Pronunciation: jiǒng
Pronunciation (Cantonese): gwing2
Pronunciation (Middle Chinese): kˠwiæŋX
Pronunciation (Old Chinese): kʷaŋʔ
耨 - the only Chinese character to be pronounced "nou" in Mandarin. Means "hoe" (well, a similar tool) or "to hoe". Also a rare surname.
Pronunciation: nòu
Pronunciation (Cantonese): nau6
Pronunciation (Middle Chinese): nəuH|nuok̚
Pronunciation (Old Chinese): noːɡs / nuːɡ
黁 - the only Chinese character to be pronounced "nun" in Mandarin. Means "fragrance".
Definition: possibly hapax; a small, wild, and ferocious animal like a dog or badger of uncertain identity, said to be fond of watermelons, that only appeared once in one of the author Lu Xun's short stories
馘 - this one's quite interesting, even by the standards of this page.
Pronunciation 1: guó
Pronunciation 1 (Cantonese): gwik1, gwok3
Pronunciation 1 (Middle Chinese): kˠwɛk̚
Pronunciation 1 (Old Chinese): kʷrɯːɡ
Definition 1: traditionally glossed "severed left ear of a slain enemy" or "to sever the left ear of a slain enemy". However, some researchers have suggested that the character originally referred to the practice of headhunting, and this original meaning was subsequently suppressed during the Eastern Han Dynasty by the attempted introduction of a new character, 聝, and new meaning, referring to ears instead of heads, as headhunting eventually came to be seen as barbaric in Chinese culture.
Pronunciation 2: xù
Definition 2: an ambiguous hapax legomenon found in Zhuangzi, possiblly meaning "face", "cheek", or "headache" (the latter of which would make it synonymous with 𤷇).
𢦞 - an ancient character with uncertain meanings and pronunciations. However, one confirmed meaning is a variant of the aforementioned 馘. Given that this character consists of the radicals for "hand/claw" and "halberd/weapon" combined, it probably does not have positive connotations.
Pronunciation: (unknown)
閄 - I wonder what the semantic relation to 閃／闪 (shǎn, “to dodge; to evade; to flash”) is.
𠄔 (予 upside-down): the original form of 幻 (huàn, “illusion”), where the ultimate graph origin is much clearer.
Pronunciation: huàn
Pronunciation (Cantonese): waan6
Pronunciation (Middle Chinese): ɦˠuɛnH
Pronunciation (Old Chinese): ɡʷreːns
㐆 - reverse of 身 (shēn, “body”), a variant of both 隱／隐 (yǐn, “to hide; to conceal; hidden; etc.”) and 依 (yī, “to lean on; to rely on; to depend on; etc.”).
甩 and 甪 - these two characters are pretty goofy, having arisen rather late, and resemble either 用 or 角 (the latter even being a direct graphical descendant of 角). They mean "to come loose" in Cantonese and Min Nan respectively, and 㪐 has the same meaning in Hakka. These senses are kind of messy, and they all trace themselves back to 摔 (shuāi, “to fling, to throw, to fall down”), or "srut" in Old Chinese. What probably happened was that 角 was borrowed phonetically. (This kind of "living fossil" preservation of Old Chinese pronunciations is fairly common in Min Nan.) Aside from that, 甪 is also found in place names in the Jiangnan region for some reason.
Pronunciation: shuǎi and lù
Pronunciation (Cantonese): lat1 and luk6
Pronunciation (Hokkien): hiù and lut
Definition (Hokkien): "to throw" and "to come loose"
𪜃 - Alternate written form of the Wenzhounese term 摜／掼 (guàn, “to throw away”). Also a variant of 事 solely on account of visual similarity. The aforementioned 甩 can also be used here.
𦮙 - ancient form of 葵 (kuí, “used in the names of plants”). But the bottom component (which is not in Unicode) is itself an ancient form of 癸 (guǐ, “10th heavenly stem”), a pictogram which probably represents either a 4-handled plough or 2 halberds (which would make 癸 the original form of 戣)
Pronunciation: kuí
Pronunciation (Middle Chinese): ɡiuɪ
Pronunciation (Old Chinese): ɡʷil
凹凸 - these characters aren't actually that unknown. But they sure look weird.
Pronunciation: āotū / āotú (Mainland China and Taiwan respectively; dié and gǔ are also variant pronunciations)
圐圙 (variant: 㗄𠼟) - dialectal term borrowed from Mongolian: ᠬᠦᠷᠢᠶᠡ (küryi'e, “enclosure; area”). The glyph is from the idiom 四面八方 (sìmiànbāfāng, “from all sides”). Doublet of 庫倫／库伦 (kùlún, “enclosed pasture”).
Pronunciation: kūlüè
Pronunciation (Jin): kueh4 lye3
嬲 and 嫐 - both meaning "to make fun of" or "to flirt with", and possibly cognate with 嬈／娆 (rǎo, “to annoy, to harass”).
𨑨迌 - a Hokkien term meaning "to play". I'm not sure what the sun and the moon have to do with this term.
Pronunciation (Hokkien): chhit-thô / thit-thô
Pronunciation (Teochow): tig4 to5 / têg4 to5
□□ - characters derived from 日月 but with the middle strokes left out, pronounced similarly to 混沌. From the Huizhou dialect. (source: 《婺北乡音》)
㐃 - not a Chinese character but a Korean-coined character (gukja) for the syllable 마 (ma), a pictograph for the word 마치 (machi), now 망치 (mangchi) in South Korea, meaning "hammer". The more standard form is 亇, but this form makes it here for being one of the only Han characters to contain a triangle.
) - the notoriously complex 58-stroke (depending on which of the bajillion variants you consider authoritative) character found in the name of 𰻞𰻞麵, a.k.a. biangbiang noodles. They're from Shaanxi and they're delicious. But people can't seem to quite agree upon what the etymology or glyph origin is; there are almost as many hypotheses as there are variants to this character, some more tenable than others. Onomatopoeic, publicity or marketing stunt, a diner's creative way to get out of paying a bill, or even invention by a premier as early as the Qin Dynasty! (And then somehow getting ignored by almost all subsequent historic dictionaries?)
) - complex graphical variant of 賊, which means "thief". Notably used by the Tiandihui (Hongmen) secret society during the Qing Dynasty. To be honest, what probably really happened with "biang" (see above) is that the word for the noodle dish originated as a vernacular term without a real written form before one shop decided to just cobble together a new character with 𱟛 as the inspiration.
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