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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

坏

/pʰi⁵⁵/
unfired pottery and bricks; base
  • HSK 1
  • radical 土
  • 7 strokes

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Origin

Etymology 0

Simplified from 壞 (褱 → 不)

Etymology 3

For pronunciation and definitions of 坏 – see 坯 (“unburnt pottery and bricks; base; blank; mold; adobe; unburnt brick; etc.”).

(This character is a variant form of 坯).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • simplified fromChinese壞 “bad”
    • meaningChinese土 “earth; soil”
    • soundChinese褱 “original form of 懷／怀 (huái)”
      • meaningChinese衣 “garment; clothes; clothing (Classifier: 件)”
      • soundChinese眔 “to squint”

Meanings

character
  1. unfired pottery and bricks; base
  2. low hill
  3. wall
  4. to use earth to fill a crack

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

坏：丘再成者也。一曰瓦未燒。从土不聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 未經燒煉的磚瓦陶器。 例：土坏、陶坏、瓦坏

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

How 坏 was written 字形演變

  1. 坏 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 坏 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 坏 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: 坏