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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

某

mǒu
unspecified or not explicitly named (amount, person, or thing); some; a certain; so-and-so
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 木
  • 9 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
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Origin

Etymology 1

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 木 (“tree”) + 甘 (“sweet”); original form of 梅 (OC *mɯː, “Chinese plum”). Later borrowed to represent 某 (OC *mɯʔ, “a certain”).

Similar to 果 and 栗. Similar but unrelated to 柑.

Possibly Austroasiatic; compare Mon မူ (“what; anything”) (Schuessler, 2007).

Etymology 2

Tu (2018) suggests it is from 姥 (MC muX), which was ultimately derived from 母 (OC *mɯʔ, “mother”). The usage of 姥 (“old woman”) to refer to "wife" parallels that of 翁 (“old man”) to refer to "husband" in Min Nan.

Cognate with Teochew 𡚸 (bhou2), Eastern Min 𡚸 (muō).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
  • ideaChinese甘 “sweet”

Related: Mon မူ

Meanings

character
  1. unspecified or not explicitly named (amount, person, or thing); some; a certain; so-and-so
  2. I
  3. Used in place of a person's given name, for anonymity purposes.
  4. Used in place of someone else's given name, to show dissatisfaction.
  5. Used in place of one's own given name, to refer to oneself with an intensified emotion.

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

某：酸果也。从木从甘。闕。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 對不指名的人、地或事物的代稱。 例：某人、某地
  2. 我，自稱之詞。 例：張某不才，但是願意代表本班參加全校的演講賽。

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

How 某 was written 字形演變

  1. 某 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 某 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 某 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 某 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 某 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: 某