The character 口 (kǒu): mouth

On a cream ground, at the left, a round cartoon face in coral pink: two round dark teal eyes, a small rounded nose, blushing cheeks, and a wide open mouth, deep pink inside, with a cream tongue at the bottom. At the right, at the same height, the character 口 in very dark brown: a plain upright rectangle drawn as a thick empty frame, taller than it is wide, its sides very slightly closer together at the foot.
Pronunciation
kǒu
Strokes
3
Level
HSK1
Radical
口

What it means

mouth; classifier for things with mouths (people, domestic animals, cannons, wells etc); classifier for bites or mouthfuls

Where its shape comes from

An open mouth seen from the front. Xu Shen defines it by what it does, "that by which a person speaks and eats", and files it among the figurings. On the oldest inscriptions the outline is rounded, close to an oval; the rectangle we write today is a regularisation, as with every circle in Chinese writing, which a brush does not draw.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

How it used to be written

Forms, sources and dates: the 字形演變 database of 小學堂, Academia Sinica, public domain (CC0).

A way to remember it

Three strokes make the rectangle, and it is slightly narrower at the bottom than at the top. Leave the inside empty: the moment you put a bar in there you no longer have the mouth, you have the sun.

This is a memory aid, not the origin of the character.

Words it appears in

See the 44 HSK words built on 口, grouped by level.

Writing it

See the stroke order of 口, animated stroke by stroke.

Share this page