漢字Kanji · in Human Body & People
古: old
十 and 口 carry the meaning
Oracle bone · Shang Bronze · Western Zhou Today
Oracle bone and bronze: Wikimedia Commons, traced from Academia Sinica, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Three readings, and the words that use each
コko · on'yomi · in compounds
- 古典こてんclassics
- 古代こだいancient times
- 古墳こふんancient burial mound; barrow; tumulus
- 中古ちゅうこused; second-hand; old
- 古書こしょold book; rare book; classic
ふるいfurui · kun'yomi · on its own
- 古いふるいold
ふる-furu- · kun'yomi
- 古新聞ふるしんぶんold newspapers
Special readingsThese words are read as a whole, not from the readings above.
- 古いにしえantiquity; ancient times; bygone days
Also read -ふるす, with no example words in our sources. Words: Kanji alive, CC BY 4.0 · JMdict, EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where it comes from
Origin · sourced
Ideogram (指事)
A shield (甲, contraction of 盾 and similar but unrelated to 中) and the radical of the mouth (口) both as a distinguishing mark and as a component that partly indicates pronunciation. Together, they indicate the concept of "strong, firm" (as strong as a shield); original form of 固 (Qiu Xigui, Ding Shan 丁山).
Source: Wiktionary, 古 (rev. 92200074), CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“Ten (十) + mouth (口). Imagine stories and traditions that have been told by the "mouth" for "ten" generations—the literal definition of antiquity.”
Connections
古 gives its sound to
The family reading is コ (ko). Sound parts: KanjiVG.
Easy to confuse
The difference, side by sideIn ChineseSame character in simplified and traditional · gǔ
Same form: 古 is written the same way in mainland China (simplified) and in Taiwan and Hong Kong (traditional).
- Simplified
- 古 mainland China, Singapore
- Traditional
- 古 Taiwan, Hong Kong
Pinyin gǔ most common reading
Forms and pinyin: Unicode Unihan database (Unicode License v3). Pinyin lists the most common reading, not every reading.