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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

妹

mèi
younger sister
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 1
  • radical 女
  • 8 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *mɯːds): semantic 女 (“female, woman”) + phonetic 未 (OC *mɯds).

Probably Sino-Tibetan. Proposed etymologies:

* STEDT relates it to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mi (“girl; female; feminine suffix”), whence Apatani nyimii (“girl; woman; female”), Proto-Loloish *C-mi² (“woman”), Proto-Karen *hmɨᴮ (“female; woman”).

* Schuessler (2007) compares it to Burmese မ (ma., “sister”) (whence အစ်မ (acma., “elder sister”), ညီမ (nyima., “younger sister”)), Miju ku-mai- (“woman”), Tibetan བུད་མེད (bud med, “woman”), and also Mizo hmei (“concubine”) (> Mizo hmei-chhia (“woman; wife”)), which STEDT relates to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-maj (“widow, widower”) instead.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese女 “woman; (only of humans in Standard Chinese) female”
  • soundChinese未 “to have not; not yet”

Related: Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mi, Apatani nyimii, Proto-Loloish *C-mi², Proto-Karen *hmɨᴮ, Burmese မ, Miju ku-mai-, Tibetan བུད་མེད, Mizo hmei, Mizo hmei-chhia, Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-maj

Words built on it: 妹妹

Meanings

character
  1. younger sister
  2. girl; young female
  3. daughter
  4. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

妹：女弟也。从女未聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 稱謂
  2. 女子對同輩的自謙之詞。 例：小妹我年幼無知，請多多指教。

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

How 妹 was written 字形演變

  1. 妹 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 妹 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 妹 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 妹 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 妹