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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

壓

/jä⁵⁵/
to press; to push down
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 土
  • 17 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *qreːb): phonetic 厭 (OC *qemʔ, *qems, *qeb) + semantic 土 (“dust”).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *krap (“to beat, thrash, winnow”), which is distantly related (via an allofam) to Burmese ယပ် (yap, “fan”), and more directly to the following Sinitic words (STEDT):

* 躐 (OC *rab, “to tread, trample”)

* 押 (OC *kraːb, *qraːb, “to seal, stamp”)

* 臿 (OC *sʰreːb, “pestle; to husk grain with a mortar and pestle”)

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*krap “to beat, thrash, winnow”
  • soundChinese厭 “to be satisfied; to be sated”
    • meaningChinese厂 “cliff; habitable cave on a cliff”
    • soundChinese猒
  • meaningChinese土 “earth; soil”

Related: Burmese ယပ်

Meanings

character
  1. to press; to push down
  2. to keep under control; to control
  3. to suppress; to bring pressure on; to intimidate
  4. to approach; to draw near; to close in on
  5. to surpass; to prevail over
  6. to shelve; to lay aside

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

壓：壞也。一曰塞補。从土厭聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 由上往下施加力量。 例：壓垮、碾壓、泰山壓頂
  2. 用武力或威勢制止、驅策他人。 例：鎮壓、欺壓、強龍不壓地頭蛇
  3. 迫近、逼近。 例：大軍壓境
  4. 擱置不動。 例：積壓
  5. 超越、勝過。 例：兩方人馬爭展所長，務求在氣勢上壓過對方。
  6. 壓力的簡稱。 例：氣壓、血壓、電壓

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

How 壓 was written 字形演變

  1. 壓 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 壓 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: 壓