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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

二

èr
two
  • Ideogram
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 1
  • radical 二
  • 2 strokes
  • 貳
  • 贰

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Origin

The character 二 is an ideogram (指事) consisting of two parallel strokes. It functions as a duplication of the character 一 (one) and is part of a numerical series including 一 (one), 三 (three), and 亖 (four). The Shuowen Jiezi glosses the character as "the number of the earth" and notes it follows the pattern of 一. It represents the natural number between one and three, and can also mean second, secondary, vice-, or again.

Reconstructed as *kV-ni-s from Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the word has several cognates, including Tibetan གཉིས, Sikkimese ཉི, Tangut 𗍫, Burmese နှစ်, and Nuosu ꑍ. Based on Han-era transcriptions using the character 貳, Old Chinese is reconstructed as /*ni[t]-s/. The character appears in oracle, bronze, chu, qin, seal, and regular scripts.

Confidence: high · written by gemma4:26b, checked statement-by-statement against the sources below.

Lineage

  • partChinese一 “one”

Related: Tibetan གཉིས, Sikkimese ཉི, Tangut 𗍫, Burmese နှစ်, Nuosu ꑍ

Words built on it: 手, 平, 齊, 言, 工, 目, 夫, 示

Wiktionary etymology text

Ideogram (指事) - two parallel strokes. Compare with 一, one stroke meaning one, 三, three strokes meaning three, and 亖 (sǐ), four strokes meaning four. Duplication of 一 (“one”).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *kV-ni-s. Cognate to Tibetan གཉིས (gnyis), Sikkimese ཉི (nyi), Tangut 𗍫 (*njɨ̱¹), Burmese နှစ် (hnac), and Nuosu ꑍ (nyip). Bai cognates as well as Han-era transcriptions using the character 貳 suggest the reconstruction of a stop coda in Old Chinese /*ni[t]-s/ (Baley, 2026).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Meanings

character
  1. two
  2. second
  3. secondary, vice-
  4. again, once more
  5. two-fold, double
  6. fold, times

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

二：地之數也。从偶一。凡二之屬皆从二。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 介於一和三之間的自然數。大寫作「貳」。阿拉伯數字作「2」。 例：一、二、三……。
  2. 第二的。 例：二月、二等
  3. 使為二。 例：不二價、口無二言

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

How 二 was written 字形演變

  1. 二 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 二 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 二 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 二 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 二 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 二 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

  • etymagent (local gemma4:26b) — Generated
  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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: 二