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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

土

tǔ
earth; soil
  • HSK 6
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 土
  • 3 strokes

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Origin

Pictogram 象形 (xiàngxíng): a mound of earth. In oracle-bone inscriptions, it could also refer to the soil deity, serving as the original graph of 社 (shè). The mound later became narrowed or pointed at both ends, with the broad middle part developing into the horizontal stroke.

Unrelated to the top component of 夌, 走, and 周; also unrelated to the central component of 金 and the overall character 圭.

There is no obvious cognate and etymology, unless it may be related to Proto-Austroasiatic *tiʔ (Proto-Monic *tiiʔ (“soil; ground consisting of earth”), Semnam tɛʔ (“soil; earth”)). However, this would require the assumption of a shift from front vowel to Old Chinese *a (Schuessler, 2007).

Probably related to 社 (OC *ɦljaːʔ, “god of soil; altar to god of soil”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese十 “ten”
  • partChinese一 “one”

Related: Proto-Austroasiatic *tiʔ, Proto-Monic *tiiʔ, Semnam tɛʔ, Proto-Vietic *l-taːʔ, Vietnamese đá

Words built on it: 對, 地, 里, 坐, 塊, 場, 壞, 者, 黑, 城, 土地, 至

Meanings

character
  1. earth; soil
  2. dust
  3. land
  4. earth, one of the five elements of Wu Xing (五行 (-))
  5. crude opium
  6. hometown; native place

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

土：地之吐生物者也。二象地之下、地之中，物出形也。凡土之屬皆从土。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 地面沙泥等的混合物。 例：泥土、黏土、積土成山
  2. 土地、疆域。 例：國土、領土、疆土
  3. 國、鄉。 例：故土、吾土吾民
  4. 地方性的。 例：土產、土話
  5. 古老流傳的、民間沿用的。 例：土方、土法煉鋼
  6. 不合潮流的。 例：土氣

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

How 土 was written 字形演變

  1. 土 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 土 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 土 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 土 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 土 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 土 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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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: 土