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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

松

sōng
pine tree
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 7
  • radical 木
  • 8 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *sɢloŋ): semantic 木 (“wood”) + phonetic 公 (OC *kloːŋ).

Miyake (1997), apud Schuessler (2007), associated 松 (OC *sɢloŋ) with Old Japanese 杉 (sugi₂, “cryptomeria”); superficially similar to Thai สน (sǒn, “pine”).

The regular Mandarin pronunciation as predicted from Middle Chinese is sóng. The sound change to the yinping (陰平／阴平) pronunciation in Mandarin dialects is to avoid homophony with the word 㞞／𪨊 (sóng, “semen”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • simplified fromChinese鬆 “disheveled; unkempt”
    • meaningChinese髟 “drooping of long hair”
  • meaningChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
  • soundChinese公 “public; communal”

Related: Old Japanese 杉, Thai สน

Meanings

character
  1. pine tree
  2. a surname, 216th in the Baijiaxing

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

松：木也。从木公聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 松科植物的總稱。種類極多，一般為常綠喬木。幹聳直，皮粗厚，葉如針，花雌雄同株，結毬果，木材用途甚廣，可供醫藥和工藝用。 例：松象徵長壽，為國畫中常見的題材。
  2. 姓。

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

How 松 was written 字形演變

  1. 松 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 松 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 松 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
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 松