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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

拍

/pʰaɪ̯⁵⁵/
to pat; to slap; to clap; to swat; to hit with a flat surface (palm, swatter, etc.)
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 手
  • 8 strokes
  • 撲
  • 扑

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *pʰraːɡ): semantic 手 (“hand”) + phonetic 白 (OC *braːɡ).

Note similarities to Burmese ဖျစ် (hpyac, “to squeeze”), particularly its usage in compounds such as လက်ဖျစ် (lakhpyac, “sound of snapping fingers”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese手 “hand (Classifier: 隻／只 m c mn; 雙／双 m mn; 對／对 c)”
  • soundChinese白 “white”

Related: Burmese ဖျစ်

Words built on it: 拍照

Meanings

character
  1. to pat; to slap; to clap; to swat; to hit with a flat surface (palm, swatter, etc.)
  2. to play (a percussion instrument)
  3. racket; swatter; paddle (flat implement for hitting)
  4. to take; to shoot (a picture, a video, etc.)
  5. to call (on the phone)
  6. to send (a telegram)

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 用手掌或平面的器具輕打。 例：拍手、拍皮球、拍蒼蠅　◎
  2. 擊打東西的器具。 例：球拍、蒼蠅拍
  3. 發、發送。 例：拍電報
  4. 利用攝影器將人或物的形象記錄在軟片上。 例：拍照、拍電影
  5. 樂曲的節奏。 例：節拍
  6. 量詞。計算音樂節奏的單位。 例：這首兒歌每小節有四拍。

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

How 拍 was written 字形演變

  1. 拍 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 拍 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: 拍