Chinese Character 俘

A captive, or the act of taking one.

It lives in compounds: 俘虏 and 战俘 for a prisoner, 俘获 for capture. Older uses can mean seized goods, so never read a bare 俘 alone.

where did 俘 come from?

Its earlier form was 孚.

Its trail runs through oracle and bronze forms of 孚; 俘 adds the person radical. The Shuowen dictionary glosses it as what an army captured. In the Nara and Heian periods, Japanese 俘囚 labeled Emishi under the ritsuryō state.