Write “共”(altogether) in Chinese character

One character a day, easy to master Chinese characters. Let's take a look at the basic knowledge of "共".

 

共 ɡònɡ
Explnantion: altogether
Phrases: 一共yí ɡònɡ:altogether

“Gong” (“共”) is an associative character that looks like two hands holding a square article in the oracle bone script. The shape changes slightly in the small seal script and is simplified to its current form in the regular script. From the shape of “gong”, we can see that the original meaning of this character is “to present something with both hands”, and “to supply or provide”. The character also took on the meaning of “common, mutual” in the evolving process, and the sense of “to supply or provide” is transferred to another character “供” (also pronounced as “gong”) with an additional person (“亻”)radical. Thus, the character “共” is in most cases used to mean “common”, “shared” and “together” etc.

Sentences

Qīngdài lìcháo yígòng yǒu shísìwèi huángdì.
清代历朝一共有十四位皇帝。
During the whole period of the Qing Dynasty, there were fourteen emperors in total. 

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