• treasure, precious object;
  • jade seal, valuables;

something rare or cherished

Etymology

Originally a compound ideograph:

宀 (house/roof) – indicates something stored inside a house

玉 (jade) + 貝 (shells, currency) – symbols of wealth and valuables

Later, in Bronze inscriptions (金文 jinwen), 缶 (jar, vessel) was added as a phonetic element, transforming the character into a phono-semantic compound.

Thus the meaning developed into "precious treasures kept inside a house".

Usage in Korean

寶物 (보물) — treasure

珍寶 (진보) — precious treasure

寶玉 (보옥) — precious jade

國寶 (국보) — national treasure

寶劍 (보검) — treasured sword

Additional notes

Commonly used in personal names due to its auspicious meaning.

Alternative forms

珤 (U+73E4) — KS X 1001, quasi-standard, name use

靌 (U+974C) — KS X 1002, name use

宝 (U+5B9D) — Japanese Shinjitai and Chinese Simplified form

寳 (U+5BF3) — traditional variant, name use

㻄 (U+3EC4) — rare variant, name use

寚 (U+5BDA), 𩇉 (U+291C9) — uncommon variants

Similar shape characters

The complex form can sometimes be confused with 實 (실, fruit/reality) in small print, though Japanese simplified (宝) and Chinese simplified (宝) are clearly distinguished.

보배
bobae
bo
Kangxi radical:40, + 17
Strokes:20
Unicode:U+5BF6
Cangjie input:
  • 十一山金 (JMUC)
Composition:
  • ⿱ 𡩧 貝

Neighboring characters in the dictionary

References

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