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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

幹

/kän⁵¹/
main part of something; body; trunk
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 干
  • 13 strokes

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Origin

Originally 榦, a phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kaːns): phonetic 倝 (OC *kaːns) + semantic 木 (“tree”). The semantic 木 was replaced with a phonetic 干 (OC *kaːn), making both components phonetic.

The vulgar sense entered Mandarin from Hokkien 姦／奸 (kàn), as 姦 shares the same pronunciation with 幹 in Hokkien.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese倝 “bright”
    • meaningChinese旦 “early morning; dawn”
      • meaningChinese日 “Sun”
      • soundChinese丁 “the fourth of the ten heavenly stems”
    • soundChinese㫃 “appearance of flags flying”
  • meaningChinese木 “tree; woody plant”

Words built on it: 干

Meanings

character
  1. main part of something; body; trunk
  2. to do
  3. to work
  4. to fuck; to engage in sexual intercourse
  5. to kill
  6. to steal

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 井上的圍欄。通「韓」。 例：井幹

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

How 幹 was written 字形演變

  1. 幹 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 幹 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 幹 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 幹 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 幹 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 幹