Origin

The character 賢 combines a sound hint at the top with the radical for "treasure" or "value" at the bottom. The 貝 component originally depicted a cowrie shell, which was precious and used as currency in ancient China, making it a natural symbol for valuable things. By pairing this "valuable" radical with a sound component, the character came to mean something intellectually valuable—wisdom and intelligence. Over time, the specific visual form stabilized into the 16-stroke character we see today.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).