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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

於

/y³⁵/
in; at; on
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 7
  • radical 方
  • 8 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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Origin

Etymology 1

From an ancient variant form of 烏. Not related to 方 or 㫃.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ʔaj (“to go; directional particle”) (Schuessler, 2007). It has slowly replaced the older 于 (OC *ɢʷa) (ibid.).

In Mandarin this is innovatively pronounced yú. Schuessler (2007) sees this pronunciation

from 于, essentially treating this phenomenon as xundu (訓讀 /训读). While Sun (2018) sees this innovative pronunciation as having developed phonetically.

Etymology 3

Variant of 阿 (*qaːl, prefix in kinship terms and personal names) (ibid.).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*ʔaj “to go; directional particle”

Words built on it: 于, 由於

Meanings

character
  1. in; at; on
  2. with; on
  3. to
  4. from
  5. by
  6. than

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 介詞

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

How 於 was written 字形演變

  1. 於 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 於 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 於 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 於 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 於 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: 於