東西

; "thing; stuff"

:Féng (2022) highlights possible bridging contexts which could have facilitated the reanalysis from "everywhere; anywhere" to "everything; anything," namely in some cases where 東西 directly follows a verb, as well as the construction Ｖ東Ｖ西 /Ｖ东Ｖ西 (“to… here and there”). In these contexts, 東西 could have been readily reinterpreted as the object of the verb (for example, "to look here and there" → "to look at this and that").

:Alternatively, Yáng (2020, p. 403–404) proposes that the reanalysis started from set phrases such as 不知東西 and 不識東西 ("to not know the basic directions", meaning "ignorant, unenlightened"), which are common in early texts; according to Yáng, they were first reinterpreted as "to not know even the simplest things," then as "to not know anything, to not know a thing."

:The "thing" sense has also been variously interpreted to have developed from "various products and resources produced everywhere," from an allusion to the East and West Markets of Táng-dynasty Cháng’ān, or from "goods from Japan (東洋 /东洋 (Dōngyáng)) and the West (西洋 (Xīyáng)) (after the lifting of the Míng sea ban)," among others; various interpretations based on Wǔxíng have also been proposed. See Yáng (2020, p. 398–400) for a list of these fanciful etymologies.