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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

夫

/fu⁵⁵/
male adult; man
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 3
  • radical 大
  • 4 strokes

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Etymology 1

Pictogram (象形): a variant form of 大 (OC *daːds, *daːds) preserving its original meaning of 夫 (OC *pa, “man”). 大 and 夫 were originally used interchangeably before settling to their current meanings.

The character was later also phonetically borrowed as an instance of jiajie (假借) for 夫 (OC *ba, “that”).

Shuowen mistakes the added horizontal stroke for a hairpin. In ancient times, when men reached the age of 20, they bound their hair with a hairpin during the Guan Li ceremony. The hairpin would thus be interpreted as the sign of “a grownup man”.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *pa (“male”), not to be confused with 父 (OC *paʔ, *baʔ, “father”).

Etymology 2

“That”. Schuessler (2007) connects this with Proto-Loloish *m-ba (“on the other side”), Tibetan ཕ (pha, “beyond, farther on, onward”). Maybe related to 彼 (OC *pralʔ, “that”). Pulleyblank (1995) relates the introductory particle sense with 凡 (OC *bom).

In the sense "is it not?", probably a contraction of 不 (OC *pɯ, *pɯʔ, *pɯ') and 乎 (OC *ɢaː) (Pulleyblank, 1995, p. 145).

Etymology 4

For pronunciation and definitions of 夫 – see 伕.

(This character is the second-round simplified form of 伕).

Notes:

Simplified Chinese is mainly used in Mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Traditional Chinese is mainly used in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

Short for 夫佬 (fu¹ lou²).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese二 “two”
  • partChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*pa “male”

Related: Tibetan ཕ

Words built on it: 功夫, 丈夫, 夫人, 夫妻, 大夫, 工夫, 規, 扶

Meanings

character
  1. male adult; man
  2. husband
  3. manual worker
  4. conscripted laborer
  5. a transliteration of the Russian surname -в (-v) of the Slavic male surname suffix

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

夫：丈夫也。从大，一以象簪也。周制以八寸爲尺，十尺爲丈。人長八尺，故曰丈夫。凡夫之屬皆从夫。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 發語詞。表提示作用，常用於文言文中。 例：夫天無不覆，地無不載。（《莊子．德充符》 ）
  2. 嘆詞。表感嘆或疑問，常用於文言文中。 例：逝者如斯夫，不舍晝夜。（《論語．子罕》）
  3. 指示形容詞。相當於「此」、「彼」，常用於文言文中。 例：夫人不言，言必有中。（《論語．先進》）

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

How 夫 was written 字形演變

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