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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

假

jià
to lend; to borrow; to loan
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 人
  • 11 strokes

Etymology graph

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

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kraːʔ, *kraːs): semantic 亻 (“person”) + phonetic 叚 (OC *kraːʔ).

; “to borrow; false”

: Cognate with Tibetan ཀར་སྐྱིན (kar skyin, “loan; thing borrowed”). An allofam is probably 雇 (OC *kʷaːs, *ɡʷaːʔ, “to hire”) (Schuessler, 2007).

: Compare also perhaps Burmese ကြွေး (krwe:, “debt”) (STEDT).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • soundChinese叚 “original form of 假 (jiǎ, “to borrow”)”
    • ideaChinese爪 “claw (of animal, bird); talon; paw; nail”
    • ideaChinese又 “again; once more”
    • ideaChinese石 “stone; rock (Classifier: 嚿 c; 塊／块 c)”

Related: Tibetan ཀར་སྐྱིན, Burmese ကြွေး

Words built on it: 放假, 假期, 假如, 休假, 暑假

Meanings

character
  1. to lend; to borrow; to loan
  2. to lease; to rent
  3. to give, provide, grant
  4. to forgive; to condone; to absolve
  5. acting
  6. to delegate an acting position to

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

假：非眞也。从人叚聲。一曰至也。《虞書》曰：“假于上下。”

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 依規定或經申請獲准，暫時不工作或不學習的時間。 例：暑假、病假、休假

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

How 假 was written 字形演變

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