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

呀

/jä⁵⁵/

to be surprised

HSK 4
TOCFL 3
radical 口
7 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

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

Lineage

Meanings

character

to be surprised
Interjection for expressing surprise
creak
a classifier

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

呀：張口皃。从口牙聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

助詞。表示驚訝或肯定的語氣。例：他呀！恐怕無法來參加這次的聚會。

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

How 呀 was written 字形演變

Small seal
說文小篆
Shuowen, c. 100 CE
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