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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

叫

jiào
to be called
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 1
  • radical 口
  • 5 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kiːws): semantic 口 (“mouth”) + phonetic 丩 (OC *kɯw, *krɯw). According to Shuowen Jiezi, its original meaning was "to shout".

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese口 “mouth, especially the lips and internal mouth cavity (Classifier: 把 c)”
  • soundChinese丩 “to connect or graft a vine”

Meanings

character
  1. to be called
  2. to call; to name
  3. to call (someone)
  4. to yell; to shout
  5. to hail; to greet
  6. to ask; to order

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

叫：嘑也。从口丩聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 呼喊。 例：吼叫、拍手叫好、大呼小叫
  2. 鳴、發出聲音。 例：雞叫、鳥叫、貓叫
  3. 稱做、稱為。 例：請問你叫什麼名字？
  4. 召喚、呼喚，多含命令口氣。 例：總經理正在叫你，快去！
  5. 雇用、點購。 例：叫車、叫菜
  6. 使、讓、令。 例：他常常無故發牌氣，真叫人受不了！

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

How 叫 was written 字形演變

  1. 叫 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 叫 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 叫