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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

市

shì
city; town
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 巾
  • 5 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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Origin

Oracle bone script and bronze inscriptions: Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *djɯʔ): semantic 兮 (“bustling”) + phonetic 之 (OC *tjɯ).

Possibly related to Proto-Tai *z.ɟɯːꟲ (“to buy”), whence Thai ซื้อ (sʉ́ʉ) (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese兮 “Sentence-internal or final exclamatory particle.”
  • soundChinese之 “to go”
    • ideaChinese止 “foot”
    • ideaChinese一 “one”

Related: Proto-Tai *z.ɟɯːꟲ, Thai ซื้อ

Words built on it: 城市, 超市, 市場, 鬧, 上市, 都市, 市民

Meanings

character
  1. city; town
  2. market; fair
  3. to trade; to do business
  4. to buy
  5. to sell
  6. market situation; especially the stock market

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

市：買賣所之也。市有垣，从冂从乁，乁，古文及，象物相及也。之省聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 進行買賣、交易的場所。 例：市場、夜市、股市
  2. 工商業發達、人口密集的城鎮。 例：都市、城市
  3. 行政區域的劃分單位。 例：臺北市、臺中市
  4. 買賣、交易。 例：市米、有行無市

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

How 市 was written 字形演變

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