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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

倒

dǎo
to fall; to fall over; to fall down
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 人
  • 10 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *taːwʔ, *taːws): semantic 亻 + phonetic 到 (OC *taːws).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • soundChinese到 “to arrive at a destination; to reach a destination; to get to”
    • meaningChinese至 “to reach; to arrive”
    • soundChinese刀 “knife; blade (Classifier: 把 m c g h j mb md w x; 張／张 c h; 叢／丛 mn; 支 mn mn-t)”

Words built on it: 倒是

Meanings

character
  1. to fall; to fall over; to fall down
  2. to collapse; to fall in
  3. to lie down; to recline
  4. to fail; to be on the decline
  5. to be damaged; to malfunction
  6. to go bankrupt; to close down

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

倒：仆也。从人到聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 方向相反。 例：倒掛、海水倒灌
  2. 把物體或液體從容器中傾倒出來。 例：倒垃圾、倒茶水 ◎
  3. 向後退。 例：倒車、倒退
  4. 反而。表示出乎意料之外。 例：他平常挺機靈的，怎麼一遇到問題倒沒了主意。
  5. 卻。 例：這主意雖然不錯，倒未必是最好的。

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

How 倒 was written 字形演變

  1. 倒 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 倒 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: 倒