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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

木

mù
tree; woody plant
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 木
  • 4 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

Pictogram (象形) – a tree: branches on top, roots on the bottom (more visible in earlier forms).

See also 本, 未, and 末.

No known cognate exists. It can perhaps be compared with Proto-Karen *məŋᴮ (“trunk (of a tree); firewood”) (Starostin) or Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔmuk (“stump (of a tree)”) (Schuessler, 2007).

The common Sino-Tibetan root for “tree; wood” is *siŋ ~ sik, represented by 薪 (OC *siŋ, “firewood”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese十 “ten”
  • partChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”

Related: Proto-Karen *məŋᴮ, Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔmuk

Words built on it: 條, 樓, 杯, 床, 幹, 樹, 米, 查, 樣, 極, 相, 樂

Meanings

character
  1. tree; woody plant
  2. wood; timber (Classifier: 條／条 c; 塊／块 c; 嚿 c; 轆／辘 c)
  3. wooden
  4. wood, one of the five elements of Wu Xing (五行 (-))
  5. coffin
  6. simple; plain; slow; emotionless; wooden

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

木：冒也。冒地而生。東方之行。从屮，下象其根。凡木之屬皆从木。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 木本植物的通稱。 例：樹木、花木
  2. 木材。 例：朽木不可雕
  3. 棺材。 例：行將就木
  4. 用木材製成的。 例：木椅、木屋
  5. 性情樸實。 例：剛毅木訥
  6. 沒有知覺的。 例：麻木

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

How 木 was written 字形演變

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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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: 木