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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

創

/ʈ͡ʂʰu̯ɑŋ⁵¹/
to start to (do something); to do something (for the first time); to found; to create; to establish
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 7
  • radical 刀
  • 12 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *sʰraŋ, *sʰraŋs): phonetic 倉 (OC *sʰaːŋ) + semantic 刀 (“knife”) – wound.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese倉 “granary”
    • ideaChinese合 “to close; to shut”
      • ideaChinese亼 “mouth”
        • ideaChinese入 “to enter; to go into”
        • ideaChinese一 “one”
      • ideaChinese口 “mouth, especially the lips and internal mouth cavity (Classifier: 把 c)”
    • ideaChinese戶 “door”
  • meaningChinese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)”

Meanings

character
  1. to start to (do something); to do something (for the first time); to found; to create; to establish
  2. to expand; to broaden; to extend
  3. to write; to start to compile
  4. to punish; to penalise
  5. unique; special; unseen; creative
  6. to do; to perform

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 開始做。 例：首創、草創、創制
  2. 開始的、獨特的。 例：創見、創意、創舉

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

How 創 was written 字形演變

  1. 創 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 創 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 創 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 創