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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

半

/pän⁵¹/
half
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 1
  • radical 十
  • 5 strokes
  • 畫
  • 画

Etymology graph

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 八 (“to divide”) + 牛 (“cow”) – to cut a cow into two halves.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *par. Related to 畔 (OC *baːns, “bank between fields”), which is an endopassive of 半 (OC *paːns, “half”), lit. "be separated from".

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*par
  • ideaChinese八 “eight”
  • ideaChinese牛 “bovine, e.g. cow, bull, ox, buffalo, bison, yak (Classifier: 頭／头 m c mb md; 條／条 m g h x; 隻／只 m c g …”

Words built on it: 一半, 胖, 半天, 半夜, 半年

Meanings

character
  1. half
  2. very little
  3. halfway, partially, semi-
  4. half past

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

半：物中分也。从八从牛。牛爲物大，可以分也。凡半之屬皆从半。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 二分之一。 例：半數、半碗飯、年過半百
  2. 在兩端中間、中央。 例：半夜、半路、月半
  3. 部分、不完全的。 例：半成品、半生不熟、一知半解

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

How 半 was written 字形演變

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