個

  • individual, single unit;

Commonly used as a measure word (classifier) in Chinese, for counting people and many objects like “piece,” “unit,” or “item”.

Etymology

Components:

人 (person) – semantic component, indicating “human” or “individual.”

固 (solid, firm) – phonetic component, lending the sound gè / 개.

Thus, 個 originally meant “a single person” and later generalized to “a single unit of anything.”

個
낱
개
nat
gae
Kangxi radical:9, 人 + 8
Strokes:10
Unicode:U+500B
Cangjie input:
  • 人田十口 (OWJR)
Composition:
  • ⿰ 亻 固
Writing order
個 Writing order

Neighboring characters in the dictionary

References

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