犬

Alternative forms

• 犭 (when used as a left Chinese radical)

Although the alternative form clearly shows only three strokes, it is still counted as four strokes when using a Chinese dictionary. Compare 氵 from 水 (“water”), 扌 from 手 (“hand”), and 忄 from 心 (“heart”), all of which are 3-stroke forms from 4-stroke characters.

Han character

犬 (Kangxi radical 94, 犬+0, 4 strokes, cangjie input 戈大 (IK), four-corner 4303₀, composition ⿺大丶)

1. Kangxi radical #94, ⽝.

Glyph origin

More information Historical forms of the character 犬, Shang ...

Historical forms of the character 犬
Shang		Western Zhou	Warring States	Shuowen Jiezi (compiled in Han)	Liushutong (compiled in Ming)
Bronze inscriptions	Oracle bone script	Bronze inscriptions	Chu slip and silk script	Small seal script	Transcribed ancient scripts

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Pictogram (象形) – the side view of a dog.

Etymology

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *d-kʷəj-n (“dog”); cognate with Tibetan ཁྱི (khyi, “dog”), Burmese ခွေး (hkwe:, “dog”).

This common Sino-Tibetan word has been replaced by 狗 (OC *koːʔ) in most topolects except Eastern Min, such as Fuzhou kēng. In other topolects, this word is mainly found in compounds and not used alone.

Pronunciation

Definitions

犬

1. (formal or in compounds or Eastern Min, Waxiang, dialectal Wu) dog

   警犬  ―  jǐngquǎn  ―  police dog

   • 效馬效羊者右牽之；效犬者左牽之。 [Traditional Chinese poetry, trad.]
     效马效羊者右牵之；效犬者左牵之。 [Traditional Chinese poetry, simp.]

     From: The Book of Rites, c. 4^th – 2^nd century BCE

     Xiào mǎ xiào yáng zhě yòu qiān zhī; xiào quǎn zhě zuǒ qiān zhī. [Pinyin]

     He who is presenting a horse or a sheep should lead it with his right hand. He who is presenting a dog should lead it with his left hand.

Compounds

Descendants

• Bai: *qʰuaŋ²

References

• “犬”, in 漢語多功能字庫 (Multi-function Chinese Character Database)‎, 香港中文大學 (the Chinese University of Hong Kong), 2014–
• 李如龙 [Li, Ru-long], 刘福铸 [Liu, Fu-zhu], 吴华英 [Wu, Hua-ying], 黄国城 [Huang, Guo-cheng] (2019) “犬”, in 莆仙方言调查报告 [Investigation Report on Puxian Dialect] (overall work in Mandarin and Puxian Min), Xiamen University Press, →ISBN, page 230.

Further reading

• Victor Mair, "Of dogs and Old Sinitic reconstructions" on Language Log (March 7, 2018)