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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

影

yǐng
shadow
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • radical 彡
  • 15 strokes
  • 蔭
  • 荫

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *qraŋʔ): phonetic 景 (OC *kraŋʔ) + semantic 彡. The original meaning is "shadow". The phonetic component also indicates the concept of image.

Unclear. Various etymologies have been proposed:

* Cognate with 景 (OC *kraŋʔ, “image”), 鏡 (OC *kraŋs, “mirror”) (Wang, 1982; Baxter and Sagart, 2014), which STEDT compares to Proto-Kuki-Chin *klaaŋ-I, *klaan-II (“to shine; light; bright”);

* Cognate with 英 (OC *qraŋ, “brilliant; flower”) or rather its Austroasiatic comparanda, including Proto-Bahnaric *ʔaːŋ (“bright (light)”) (Schuessler, 2007);

* Related to 苑 (OC *qonʔ, *qons, “garden”) (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese景 “sunlight”
    • meaningChinese日 “Sun”
    • soundChinese京 “capital (city)”
  • meaningChinese彡 “hair”

Related: Proto-Kuki-Chin *klaaŋ-I, Proto-Bahnaric *ʔaːŋ

Words built on it: 影片, 電影, 影響

Meanings

character
  1. shadow
  2. image
  3. trace (of human presence); presence (of people or things); occurrence (of events)
  4. picture; photograph
  5. film; movie
  6. to take (a picture or video)

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 光線被遮擋所造成的陰暗形象。 例：人影、樹影、陰影
  2. 人物的形象或圖像。 例：攝影、背影、身影
  3. 仿照、描摹。 例：影印

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

How 影 was written 字形演變

  1. 影 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 影 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 影