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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

寶

bǎo
treasure; riches; a wonder; valuables; precious thing
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 宀
  • 20 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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Origin

Oracle bone script: Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 宀 (“house”) + 琡 (“jade”) + 貝 (“cowry”) – treasures in a house.

The phonetic component 缶 (OC *puʔ) was added to the character in bronze inscriptions.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *pəw (“price”); cognate with Burmese အဖိုး (a.hpui:, “price”) (Schuessler, 2007; STEDT). Peiros and Starostin (1996) also compares it to Tibetan སྤུས (spus, “goods”). Sagart (1999) relates it to 富 (OC *pɯɡs, “rich”). Schuessler (2007) proposes that it could be the same word as 保 (OC *puːʔ, “to take care of; to consider something precious”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*pəw “price”
  • ideaChinese宀 “a type of deep house with walls on all four sides, a roof, a main hall, and back rooms”
  • ideaChinese琡 “jade tablet (璋) that is eight cun long”
  • ideaChinese貝 “shellfish; cowrie”

Related: Burmese အဖိုး, Tibetan སྤུས

Meanings

character
  1. treasure; riches; a wonder; valuables; precious thing
  2. to treasure; to cherish
  3. to collect (treasures)
  4. treasured; cherished
  5. precious; valuable
  6. jade token

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

寶：珍也。从宀从王从貝，缶聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 珍貴的東西。 例：珠寶、國寶、傳家之寶
  2. 珍貴的。 例：寶刀、寶劍
  3. 舊時稱錢幣。 例：元寶、通寶
  4. 稱與君王或與神、佛有關的事物。 例：寶位、寶塔、寶剎
  5. 尊稱他人或與他人有關的事物。 例：寶眷、寶號

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

How 寶 was written 字形演變

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