肖
Character Story & Explanation
肖 is rarely used alone in modern Mandarin; instead, it thrives in fixed compounds like 肖像 (xiàoxiàng, 'portrait') and 维肖 (wéixiào, 'exquisitely lifelike'), especially in art criticism and legal documents (e.g., '肖像权'—portrait rights, protected under China’s Civil Code). Historically, it appeared in classical texts such as the Shuōwén Jiězì (121 CE), where Xu Shen defined it as 'resembling, like' (似也), confirming its semantic core over two millennia.
The character’s origin is not pictographic but phonosemantic: ⺼ signals bodily resemblance, while the right side 小 (xiǎo, 'small') serves as a phonetic hint—though pronunciation shifted from *sieu to xiào. No oracle bone form exists; the earliest verified inscriptions are in bronze and seal scripts of the Warring States period, where it consistently conveys 'similarity' in descriptive or honorific contexts.
Our detective begins at the crime scene: the character 肖, stamped with the flesh radical ⺼—a clue pointing to the body, likeness, and embodied resemblance. Early forms in seal script (c. 3rd century BCE) show a simplified head-and-body profile beside a phonetic component, evolving from the older character 蕭 (xiāo, meaning 'dewy willow'), which lent its sound but shed its botanical meaning. This phonetic loan shift is textbook ‘rebus usage’—a common strategy when scribes needed a new word without inventing a new glyph.
By the Han dynasty, 肖 had crystallized as a standalone character meaning ‘to resemble’ or ‘to be like’, distinct from its homophone 萧. Its seven-stroke form stabilized in clerical script: first the ⺼ radical (strokes 1–2), then the upper-right ‘small’-like component 小 (strokes 3–5), capped by two short horizontal strokes (6–7) that anchor visual balance—not decorative, but structural evidence of standardization under imperial script reform.
Though often confused with 消 (xiāo, ‘to disappear’) or 削 (xuē/xiāo, ‘to pare’), 肖’s identity hinges on semantic fidelity to ‘likeness’. Its HSK 6 status reflects not frequency but precision: it appears in formal, literary, or comparative contexts—never in casual speech like ‘cool’ or ‘same’. Like a forensic linguist, we note: this character doesn’t shout; it nuances—elegantly, sparingly, and always with intention.
Example Sentences
Common Compounds
Similar Characters — Don't Mix These Up
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