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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

寬

kuān
wide; broad
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 宀
  • 15 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kʰoːn): semantic 宀 (“house”) + phonetic 萈 (OC *ɡoːn, “goat”)—a spacious house.

See also 家.

According to Schuessler (2007), probably related to Tibetan ཁྱོན (khyon, “size, area”). Note also similarities to Burmese ခွင့် (hkwang., “permission, rights”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese宀 “a type of deep house with walls on all four sides, a roof, a main hall, and back rooms”
  • soundChinese萈 “goat with thin horns”
    • soundChinese𥄕 “uneven eyes”
      • ideaChinese⻀ “ram's horn”
      • ideaChinese目 “eye (Classifier: 雙／双 mn-t)”

Related: Tibetan ཁྱོན, Burmese ခွင့်

Meanings

character
  1. wide; broad
  2. width
  3. generous; magnanimous; lenient
  4. to relax; to relieve
  5. comfortably off; well-off
  6. to take off

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

寬：屋寬大也。从宀萈聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 廣大、廣闊。與「狹」、「窄」相對。 例：寬廣、寬闊、寬敞　◎
  2. 鬆、不緊。 例：寬鬆、衣帶漸寬
  3. 不嚴苛、度量大。 例：寬厚、寬恕、寬大為懷
  4. 闊綽、富裕。 例：寬裕、手頭寬
  5. 放鬆。 例：寬心、寬慰
  6. 放寬、延緩。 例：寬限、寬緩

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

How 寬 was written 字形演變

  1. 寬 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 寬 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 寬 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 寬 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: 寬