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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

板

bǎn
plank; board
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • radical 木
  • 8 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *praːnʔ): semantic 木 (“tree”) + phonetic 反 (OC *panʔ, *pʰan).

Officially adopted as the simplified form of 闆 (etymology 2) in the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (《漢字簡化方案》) in 1956.

The same word as 版 (OC *praːnʔ, “plank”). Cognate with Tibetan འཕར ('phar, “panel; small plank”) (Schuessler, 2007), Burmese ပြား (pra:, “flat, pya”) (Hill, 2019, p. 224).

Etymology 2

Script reformer Chen Guangyao (陳光垚) asserted in 1956 that this substitution had been seen in "the Changjiang area".

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • simplified fromChinese闆 “only used in 老闆／老板 (lǎobǎn)”
  • meaningChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
  • soundChinese反 “to turn over or flip; to turn around; to reverse; to change to an opposite position”

Related: Tibetan འཕར, Burmese ပြား

Words built on it: 黑板

Meanings

character
  1. plank; board
  2. blackboard
  3. sluggish; stiff; inflexible
  4. to harden; hardened
  5. board (sub-unit of a larger BBS or imageboard)
  6. clapper

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 片狀的木料。 例：木板、杉板、三夾板
  2. 呈薄片或扁平狀的物體。 例：銅板、墊板、腳板
  3. 印刷物的刻板。 例：板本、書板
  4. 音樂的節拍。 例：板眼、快板、慢板
  5. 呆滯或固執的表情。 例：呆板、古板
  6. 繃緊。 例：板著臉、板面孔

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

How 板 was written 字形演變

  1. 板 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  2. 板 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: 板