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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

任

rèn
to carry on a shoulder pole; to carry
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 人
  • 6 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *njɯm, *njɯms): semantic 亻 (“person”) + phonetic 壬 (OC *l̥ʰeːŋʔ, *njɯm) – to carry on a shoulder pole.

Note that its phonetic part 壬 (OC *njɯm) may be the graphical representation of 任, depicting a shoulder pole rotated by 90 degrees.

Cognate with 妊 (OC *njɯms, “pregnant”) and Tibetan སྣོམ་པ (snom pa, “to take; seize; hold”). May also be cognate with Proto-Kam-Sui *ȵam¹ (“to hold”) and Old Khmer nāṃ (“to carry”) (Schuessler, 2007). Note also similarities with Burmese နှံ (hnam, “to entrust”) (Luce, 1981).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • soundChinese壬 “the ninth of the ten heavenly stems”

Related: Tibetan སྣོམ་པ, Proto-Kam-Sui *ȵam¹, Old Khmer nāṃ, Burmese နှံ

Words built on it: 任何, 主任, 信任

Meanings

character
  1. to carry on a shoulder pole; to carry
  2. to bear; to endure; to put up with
  3. to take charge of; to assume the post of; to be in charge of
  4. to trust to; to rely on; to believe; to guarantee
  5. to appoint; to assign someone to a post
  6. to indulge; to be self-indulgent; to allow

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

任：符也。从人壬聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 職責、職務。 例：責任、任務、重任
  2. 職位。 例：就任、赴任、卸任
  3. 委用。 例：派任、任免
  4. 聽憑。 例：任意、任由、任其自然
  5. 擔當、承擔。 例：任職、任教
  6. 無論。 例：他現在正在氣頭上，任你怎麼解釋，他都不會聽的。

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

How 任 was written 字形演變

  1. 任 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 任 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 任 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 任 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 任 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 任 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 任