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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

亂

luàn
disorderly; messy; chaotic
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 乙
  • 13 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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  • sound component
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *roːns): phonetic 𤔔 (*[r]ˁo[n]-s) + semantic 乚. The left-side component 𤔔 is itself ideogrammatic, depicting the effort to comb a tangle of threads, hence the semantic link to order and disorder.

Area word of Austroasiatic origin. Compare Khmer ប្រួល (pruəl, “changing; unstable”) < Khmer រួល (ruəl, “to cook; to grill”), and also Khmer កំរោល (kɑmraol, “to go berserk; to become excited”) < Khmer រោល (rool, “to burn; to roast”) (Schuessler, 2007). Burmese ရုန်း (run:, “to struggle, to warp, to cause chaos”) and Tibetan ཁྲལ་ཁྲུལ (khral khrul, “fragments; scattered”) are Austroasiatic loans. Compare also Vietnamese lộn (“to turn the inside out, upside down, to reverse, to return, etc.”) and trộn (“to mix, to blend”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese𤔔 “to govern”
    • ideaChinese糸 “thin silk”
    • ideaChinese冂 “city outskirts; suburbs”
    • ideaChinese𠬪 “to give”
      • ideaChinese爪 “claw (of animal, bird); talon; paw; nail”
      • ideaChinese又 “again; once more”
  • meaningChinese乙 “The second of the ten heavenly stems (天干 (tiāngān))”

Related: Khmer ប្រួល, Khmer រួល, Khmer កំរោល, Khmer រោល, Burmese ရုန်း, Tibetan ཁྲལ་ཁྲུལ, Vietnamese lộn

Meanings

character
  1. disorderly; messy; chaotic
  2. unstable; volatile; turbulent
  3. unrest; uprising; revolt; rebellion
  4. confused; befuddled
  5. distraught; upset
  6. promiscuous

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

亂：治也。从乙，乙，治之也；从𤔔。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 無條理秩序的。 例：混亂、雜亂、快刀斬亂麻
  2. 煩雜、不安寧。 例：心慌意亂、心緒煩亂
  3. 動盪、不安定。 例：動亂、亂邦
  4. 叛變、造反。 例：作亂、叛亂
  5. 混淆。 例：以假亂真
  6. 任意、隨便。 例：亂來、亂跑、亂說話

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

How 亂 was written 字形演變

  1. 亂 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 亂 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 亂 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 亂 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 亂 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: 亂