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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

共

gòng
common
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 八
  • 6 strokes

Etymology graph

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

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 廾 (“two hands”) + 口 (“an object”) – holding up an object with two hands. Eventually 口 (not “mouth”) came to be written 廿 (not “twenty”), which later fused with 廾 to form the modern 共.

Possibly the original form of 供 (“to provide; to offer”).

Possibly related to 廾 (OC *k(r)oŋʔ, “to fold the hands in front of the breast”), with the stativizing prefix *N- (Baxter and Sagart, 2014). Schuessler (2007) also relates this word to 供 (OC *kloŋ, *kloŋs, “to provide”) and suggests the possibility of also relating it to 恭 (OC *kloŋ, “to respect”) and 貢 (OC *koːŋs, “tribute”).

The kā reading in Hokkien is from the weakening of kāng (Wu, 2017; Chappell et al., 2011).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese廾 “both hands”
  • ideaChinese口 “mouth, especially the lips and internal mouth cavity (Classifier: 把 c)”

Words built on it: 一共, 公共, 共同, 共有

Meanings

character
  1. common
  2. together
  3. to share
  4. altogether
  5. the Communist Party of China
  6. and

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

共：同也。从廿、廾。凡共之屬皆从共。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 一起、一同。 例：共鳴、共事、共襄盛舉
  2. 合計、總計。 例：共計、總共
  3. 相同的。 例：共識、共相
  4. 分享、合用。 例：願車馬衣輕裘與朋友共，敝之而無憾。（《論語．公冶長》）
  5. 共產黨的簡稱。 例：俄共、中共

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

How 共 was written 字形演變

  1. 共 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 共 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 共 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 共 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 共 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: 共