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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

既

/t͡ɕi⁵¹/
already
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • radical 无
  • 9 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 皀 (“bowl of rice”) + 旡 (“kneeling figure”) – person kneeling at bowl of rice – sitting down to eat (rice already finished cooking), turning away (already finished eating) or abstaining from eating or consuming.

Note the stroke order in the right component 旡, which may not be clear in the compressed form of this character: the left vertical and second horizontal are one stroke with a corner, while the upper right vertical continues in a diagonal stroke to lower left.

Maybe Sino-Tibetan (Schuessler, 2007). Exopassive (perfective) of 訖／讫 (qì, “to finish”); possibly cognate to 暨 (jì, “to reach”), see there.

Löffler (1966) compares this to Mru ki (“complete”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese皀 “Prepared food, a vessel full of food (as in 即 and 既, in which is simplified)”
  • ideaChinese旡 “when food becomes stuck in the throat”

Related: Mru ki

Words built on it: 既然

Meanings

character
  1. already
  2. to have a total solar eclipse or lunar eclipse
  3. to be finished; to end
  4. all
  5. since; as; now that
  6. both . . . (and...); as well as

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 已經。 例：既然、既定、既往不咎
  2. 表示並列的連接詞。與「且」、「又」、「也」等詞連用。 例：既醉且飽、既胖又矮

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

How 既 was written 字形演變

  1. 既 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 既 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 既 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 既 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 既 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 既 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: 既