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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

列

liè
to tear apart; to break up; to separate; to split
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 刀
  • 6 strokes

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 歹 (“skeletal remains”) + 刀 (“knife”) – to tear apart.

The seal script form can be analyzed as a phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *red): phonetic 𡿪 (liè) + semantic 刀 (“knife”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese歹 “bone remnants”
  • soundChinese𡿪
  • ideaChinese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: 系列, 例, 排列, 列入

Meanings

character
  1. to tear apart; to break up; to separate; to split
  2. a line of objects
  3. to list
  4. column (in data tables)
  5. row (in data tables)
  6. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

列：分解也。从刀𡿪聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 行次、行伍。 例：行列
  2. 依次擺置。 例：排列、陳列
  3. 類別、範圍。 例：系列、討論之列
  4. 安排、放入。 例：列入考慮
  5. 各、眾。 例：列國、列祖列宗
  6. 量詞。計算成行成列的人或物的單位。 例：一列火車

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

How 列 was written 字形演變

  1. 列 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 列 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 列 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 列 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: 列