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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

台

/i³⁵/
original form of 怡 (yí, “happy, pleased”)
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 口
  • 5 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

No etymology text yet. The graph shows what is known from the sources.

Lineage

  • simplified fromChinese檯 “table; desk (Classifier: 張／张 c)”
    • meaningChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
  • simplified fromChinese臺 “tower; lookout”
    • ideaChinese喬 “tall; lofty”
    • ideaChinese之 “to go”
      • ideaChinese止 “foot”
      • ideaChinese一 “one”
    • ideaChinese室 “room (in a building or house); chamber”
      • meaningChinese宀 “a type of deep house with walls on all four sides, a roof, a main hall, and back rooms”
      • soundChinese至 “to reach; to arrive”
    • ideaChinese高 “tall; high”
  • simplified fromChinese颱 “typhoon”

Words built on it: 治, 始, 抬

Meanings

character
  1. original form of 怡 (yí, “happy, pleased”)
  2. I, me
  3. what
  4. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

台：說也。从口㠯聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 代詞
  2. 喜悅。通「怡」。

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

How 台 was written 字形演變

  1. 台 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 台 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 台 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 台 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 台 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