What 慟 means
It names grief so intense it breaks into loud mourning.
Chinese and Japanese both use it, but in different words. Chinese 慟哭 means crying from deep sorrow; Japanese also uses 慟哭 and has the verb 慟く, “to lament.”
Where did 慟 come from?
Its documented trail includes an early Chinese dictionary and The Analects.
慟 is absent from the original 說文, an early Chinese dictionary, and later appears in the 說文新附 supplement to it. That entry analyzes the character as the heart element 心 plus 動 as a sound element, and defines it as great crying. The Analects, an early collection of sayings and stories about Confucius, uses 慟 in the account of Confucius mourning Yan Hui. In 慟哭, 哭 makes the wailing explicit while 慟 supplies the extreme grief.
Formal and literary, with grief intense enough to suggest a cry of mourning.
Alone, it can sound theatrical in everyday sympathy.
Who writes 慟
Loading…
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsA literary compound for wailing from deep grief.
Related characters
2
Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
2Is 慟 the same as 痛?
No. 慟 names extreme grief or wailing; 痛 means pain. The Chinese compound 痛哭 means crying bitterly, but it is a different compound.
Why do I see 恸 instead of 慟?
恸 is the simplified Chinese counterpart of 慟. Both carry the same grief sense; traditional Chinese and Japanese writing use 慟.
More like this
10
How to type or find 慟
- Search it as
- 恸 · tòng · tong4 · 慟哭 · 恸哭 · dōkoku · どうこく · なげく
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
慟\615FCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.