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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

几

/t͡ɕi⁵⁵/
stool; chair
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 1
  • radical 几
  • 2 strokes
  • 机

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Origin

Pictogram (象形) – a small stool viewed from the side. The original version was 𠀃, in which the horizontal stroke at the bottom represents the floor and/or the ground.

See also the bottom component of 其, 真, and 典, in which 八 is the stylization of the legs of a table.

Unrelated to 鉛, in which the top component is a stylization of 八, representing stagnant water. Also unrelated to 朵, 凡, and 殳.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *krəj (“foot, leg; stool”). Compare Tibetan ཁྲི (khri) and Burmese ခြေ (hkre).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • simplified fromChinese幾 “how much; how many”
    • ideaChinese𢆶 “minute; extremely small; tiny; infinitesimal”
    • ideaChinese戍 “to defend the frontier; (in general) to defend; to garrison”
      • ideaChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
      • ideaChinese戈 “dagger-axe (an ancient Chinese weapon similar to a halberd)”
  • partChinese丿 “left-falling stroke, usually read as 撇”
  • partChinese乙 “The second of the ten heavenly stems (天干 (tiāngān))”

Related: Tibetan ཁྲི, Burmese ခြေ

Words built on it: 風, 處

Meanings

character
  1. stool; chair
  2. long narrow table; bench
  3. small table

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

几：踞几也。象形。《周禮》五几：玉几、雕几、彤几、䰍几、素几。凡几之屬皆从几。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 小桌子。 例：茶几、窗明几淨

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

How 几 was written 字形演變

  1. 几 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  2. 几 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 几 in Clerical script
    Clerical
    隸書
    Han
  4. 几 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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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: 几