• to starve, to be famished;
  • famine, dearth;

Etymology

Phono-semantic compound:

食 (식, food) – semantic component, indicating relation to eating.

幾 (기, how many, few) – phonetic component.

Together: “food + scarcity” → hunger, famine.

Usage in Korean

饑荒 (기황) — famine, crop failure

饑饉 (기근) — famine, scarcity of food

饑渴 (기갈) — hunger and thirst

饑寒 (기한) — hunger and cold

Additional notes

Distinction:

飢 originally “to be hungry.”

饑 originally “famine, crop failure.”

Over time, the two merged in meaning and pronunciation, and 飢 is often treated as the simplified form of 饑.

주릴
julil
gi
Kangxi radical:184, + 12
Strokes:21
Unicode:U+9951
Cangjie input:
  • 人戈女戈戈 (OIVII)
Composition:
  • ⿰ 飠 幾

Neighboring characters in the dictionary

References

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