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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

乾

gān
dry; moistureless; waterless; arid
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 乙
  • 11 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kaːn, *ɡran): phonetic 倝 (OC *kaːns) + semantic 乙.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *kan (“to dry; to dry up”). Cognate with 旱 (OC *ɡaːnʔ, “drought”), Burmese ခန်း (hkan:, “to dry up; to evaporate”) (STEDT).

The sense “lacking sweetness” is a semantic loan from French sec or English dry.

Etymology 2

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m-ka-n (“heaven; sky; sun”). Cognate with Tibetan མཁའ (mkha'), ནམ་མཁའ (nam mkha', “sky; heaven”) and Namuyi nɛ⁵⁵ ŋkhɛ³³ mu³³ (“sky”).

Written as 建 (OC *kar) in the Haihunhou bamboo slips, 鍵 (OC *garʔ) in the Mawangdui silk texts, 天目 in the Wangjiatai Qin bamboo slips, and 倝 (OC *kaːns) in the Tsinghua bamboo slips.

Schuessler (2014: p. 274) proposes that 乾 (OC *gran) (> QYS *gjän) "looks like the same etymon as" 祁連 (OC *gɨ-lian), ancient pronunciation of Qilian Mountains' name.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*kan “to dry; to dry up”
  • soundChinese倝 “bright”
    • meaningChinese旦 “early morning; dawn”
      • meaningChinese日 “Sun”
      • soundChinese丁 “the fourth of the ten heavenly stems”
    • soundChinese㫃 “appearance of flags flying”
  • meaningChinese乙 “The second of the ten heavenly stems (天干 (tiāngān))”
  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*m-ka-n “heaven; sky; sun”

Related: Burmese ခန်း, Tibetan མཁའ, Namuyi nɛ⁵⁵ ŋkhɛ³³ mu³³

Words built on it: 干

Meanings

character
  1. dry; moistureless; waterless; arid
  2. to dry; to exhaust
  3. to neglect; to snub
  4. to drain one's glass; bottoms up
  5. dried up; exhausted; drained
  6. dry and coarse

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

乾：上出也。从乙，乙，物之達也；倝聲。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 八卦之一。卦形是☰，代表天、陽。
  2. 六十四卦之一。上乾（☰）下乾（☰）。象徵君子應自強不息之意。
  3. 陽剛、男性的。 例：乾道、乾宅

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 乾 was written 字形演變

  1. 乾 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  2. 乾 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 乾 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 乾