BeginChinese
every character tells a story
The ancient form
Today

kǒu · hau2

mouth; opening

Where it comes from

An open mouth, smiling slightly — one of the simplest drawings on the oracle bones, and one of the busiest characters ever since. A mouth speaks (说), sings (唱), asks (问), and eats (吃); wherever 口 appears inside a character, something is being said or swallowed.

A piece of culture

Counting mouths
The Chinese word for population is 人口 — literally "person-mouths", because for two thousand years the empire counted its people by the mouths it had to feed. The Han dynasty census of the year 2 CE registered about 60 million people, one of the oldest surviving censuses on earth. Emperors rose and fell by that number: more mouths meant more farmers, more taxes, more soldiers — and more to lose when the rains failed.

Use it in a real word

人口
rénkǒu ·
population — literally "person-mouths", and you already know 人
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