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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

杯

bēi
drinkware; cup; glass; mug (Classifier: 隻／只 c)
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 木
  • 8 strokes
  • 盃

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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *plɯː): semantic 木 + phonetic 不 (OC *pɯ, *pɯʔ, *pɯ'). According to a variant, the phonetic component is 否, which also had the ancient meaning of "to block", perhaps referred to liquids in a glass.

Sino-Tibetan; compare Tibetan ཕོར་པ (phor pa, “bowl; cup”) (Schuessler, 2007).

Etymology 2

From 杯葛 (bui¹ got³).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
  • soundChinese不 “not; un-; in-; il-; im-; ir-”

Related: Tibetan ཕོར་པ

Words built on it: 杯子

Meanings

character
  1. drinkware; cup; glass; mug (Classifier: 隻／只 c)
  2. cup; trophy
  3. alcoholic drink
  4. Classifier for cups/glasses of drinks/food.
  5. moon blocks (divination device)

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 可盛裝液體或其他物品的小型容器。 例：茶杯、紙杯、量杯　△杯子
  2. 象徵競賽優勝的杯狀獎勵品。 例：金杯、銀杯、獎杯
  3. 量詞。計算杯裝物的單位。 例：一杯水、兩杯麵粉

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

How 杯 was written 字形演變

  1. 杯 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  2. 杯 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 杯 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 杯 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: 杯