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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

撞

/ʈ͡ʂu̯ɑŋ⁵¹/
to hit; to bump against; to strike; to run into; to collide
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 5
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 手
  • 15 strokes
  • 創
  • 衝
  • 创
  • 冲

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *rdoːŋ, *rdoːŋs): semantic 扌 + phonetic 童 (OC *doːŋ).

See 衝 (OC *tʰjoŋ, “to dash, clash”), with which it may share etymological origins (Schuessler, 2007).

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童 “child”
    • ideaChinese䇂 “crime, sin”
    • ideaChinese見 “to see”
      • componentChinese目 “eye (Classifier: 雙／双 mn-t)”
      • componentChinese卩 “kneeling person”

Meanings

character
  1. to hit; to bump against; to strike; to run into; to collide
  2. to rush
  3. to meet by chance; to bump into; to come across; to encounter
  4. to clash; to coincide
  5. to coincide
  6. to guess

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

撞：卂擣也。从手童聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 敲打。 例：撞鐘
  2. 行進間猛然碰觸某物體。 例：撞車、衝撞、撞傷　◎
  3. 碰巧遇上。 例：撞見、擇期不如撞期
  4. 衝突。 例：頂撞

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

How 撞 was written 字形演變

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