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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

將

jiāng
will; going to
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 10
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 寸
  • 11 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ʔsaŋ, *ʔsaŋs): phonetic 爿 (OC *braːn, *zaŋ, “bed; small table”) + semantic ⺼ (“meat”) + semantic 寸 (“hand”) – to offer meat as tribute. Besides pronunciation, 爿 may partly indicate a small cutting board and/or sacrificial table on which the meat is placed. The sacrificial meat and the hand together form the shape 𪧷, which is similar but unrelated to 有.

The ⺼ component is on its side, hence resembles 夕 with an added dot; compare 祭, 然.

Shuowen erroneously considers the phonetic component of 將 to be 醬 (OC *ʔsaŋs, “sauce”) (abbreviated).

A conflation of two roots: “to take; to hold” and “will; be going to; near”.

; “to take; to hold” (Pronunciations 1, 2 and 3)

; “will; be going to; near” (Pronunciation 1)

; anteposed object introductory particle

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese爿 “piece of wood or bamboo (made by chopping)”
  • meaningChinese肉 “meat; flesh”
  • meaningChinese寸 “Legally defined as the tsun of 3.71475 cm.”

Words built on it: 獎

Meanings

character
  1. will; going to
  2. soon; in the near future
  3. nearly; almost
  4. 78th tetragram of the Taixuanjing; "on the verge" (𝍓)
  5. just; just now
  6. certainly; surely

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

將：帥也。从寸，𤖕省聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 請求。 例：將子無怒，秋以為期。（《詩經．衛風．氓》）

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

How 將 was written 字形演變

  1. 將 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 將 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 將 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 將 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 將 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: 將