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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

借

jiè
to lend
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 人
  • 10 strokes

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ʔsjaːɡs, *ʔsjaːɡ): semantic 人 (“person”) + phonetic 昔 (OC *sjaːɡ).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • soundChinese昔 “former times; the past; long ago; ancient times”
    • soundChinese龷
    • ideaChinese仌 “ice”
    • meaningChinese日 “Sun”

Meanings

character
  1. to lend
  2. to borrow
  3. to make use of; to take advantage of (an opportunity)
  4. to rely on; to depend on
  5. to use as a pretext

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

借：假也。从人昔聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 暫時向人告貸財物。 例：他向朋友借了很多錢，到現在都沒還清。
  2. 把財物暫時給他人使用。 例：這支筆借你用。　◎
  3. 假託、利用。 例：借刀殺人、借題發揮、借花獻佛
  4. 倚靠、憑藉。 例：借重、借助

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

How 借 was written 字形演變

  1. 借 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 借 in Clerical script
    Clerical
    隸書
    Han
  3. 借 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: 借