叟 · sǒu
old man; elder
Meanings & readings
Meaning & readings
old man; elder
- Mandarin
- sǒu
- Cantonese
- sau2
Unihan definitions and selected character readings. Read the word to establish its pronunciation in context.
Readings in Japanese, Korean & Vietnamese
Readings recorded for 叟 in other language traditions. These are character-level records, not word translations or interchangeable pronunciations.
Japanese 日本語
Grouped by the source’s kana notation; no frequency ranking is implied.
On’yomi · katakana
Kun’yomi · hiragana
Katakana generally indicates on’yomi; hiragana generally indicates kun’yomi. The source does not identify everyday, rare, historical or name use per reading. Kana strings are preserved, including any written endings; consult a Japanese word entry for actual use.
Go deeperJisho ↗Wiktionary ↗
Korean 한국어
Hanja readings · Hangul
Source codes are separated below. They are neither sounds nor tones; a character reading alone does not specify a whole word’s pronunciation.
Go deeperNaver Hanja ↗Wiktionary ↗
Reading sources explained
- 수
- KS X 1002 (1) · Personal-name Hanja (N)
Vietnamese Tiếng Việt
Not recorded for this exact character in this dataset. This does not mean the language has no reading.
Form & structure
Writing & identity
- Unicode
- U+53DF
- Radical
- 又 · 29
- Strokes
- 9 · Unihan
- Residual
- 8
Source record · Unihan 17.0. Individual senses and historical claims have not yet been reviewed by zimai.
Stroke order
9 strokesModern stroke order; regional conventions can differ. Stroke medians: Make Me a Hanzi via HanziLookupJS, drawn as an even pen line.
Graphical structure
How to read these symbols
⿰ left–right · ⿱ above–below · ⿻ overlap. Dotted boxes indicate positions, not missing characters. Each symbol describes the components that follow it; nested symbols describe a component in more detail. Source codes identify alternative analyses, not a writing sequence or an etymology.
BabelStone IDS · 2025-06-27. Region tags are preserved; 〾 marks approximation and {n} identifies an unencoded source component. These describe graphical structure, not historical derivation.
Words & connections
Words using 叟
Character connections
History & distinctions
Related forms
No simplified/traditional variant property is retained for this record.
Historical readings
- Middle Chinese
- suwX · 蘇后 反切 · #1964
Guangyun-based transcriptions · PHONO-ML · CC BY 4.0. These describe historical reading categories, not modern word pronunciation.
Source row & reading categories
CSV line 12180 · suwX = 流開一上侯心
Automatically generated in the source dataset; the authors checked a subset and acknowledge possible errors. All source readings are retained separately. Notation & method ↗
Sources & reference
Evidence & next depth
Retained Unihan properties
- kMandarin
- sǒu
- kCantonese
- sau2
- kDefinition
- old man; elder
- kTotalStrokes
- 9
- kRSUnicode
- 29.8
- kTGH
- 2013:4260
Readings across dictionaries
- Hanyu Da Zidian
- sōu,sǒu,xiāo 10399.010
- Xiandai Hanyu · 1983
- sǒu 1094.040
- Tongyong Guifan · 2013
- sǒu 349.090
- Mandarin / Cantonese · SMSZD
- sǒu粵sau2