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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

層

céng
to pile up; to overlap
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 尸
  • 15 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *zɯːŋ): semantic 尸 + phonetic 曾 (OC *ʔsɯːŋ, *zɯːŋ).

The Baxter and Sagart (2014) reconstruction suggests this word is derived from 增 (OC *s-tˤəŋ, “to increase, to expand, to add”), in turn derived from 登 (OC *tˤəŋ, “to go up, to climb”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese尸 “a living person who represents the dead person during a rite”
  • soundChinese曾 “already; ever; once (in the past); previously”

Meanings

character
  1. to pile up; to overlap
  2. thing made of layers
  3. layer; storey; floor; stratum
  4. Classifier for things arranged in layers, storeys or levels.
  5. Classifier for events.

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

層：重屋也。从尸曾聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 階級、等次。 例：階層、年齡層
  2. 重疊、重覆。 例：層巒、層出不窮
  3. 量詞。計算重疊、累積物的單位。 例：五層樓房、兩層玻璃、三層蛋糕

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

How 層 was written 字形演變

  1. 層 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 層 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: 層