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

校

xiào

school; college; university

Phono-semantic compound 形聲
HSK 1
radical 木
10 strokes
較
较

Etymology graph

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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kreːws, *ɡreːws): semantic 木 (“tree”) + phonetic 交 (OC *kreːw).

Etymology 3

A derivative, with causative suffix -s, of 交 (OC *kreːw). (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

meaningChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
soundChinese交 “to intersect; to cross”

Words built on it: 學校

Meanings

character

school; college; university
a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

校：木囚也。从木交聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

施教求學的地方。例：學校、軍校、補校
中級軍官的名稱，分上校、中校、少校三級。

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

How 校 was written 字形演變

Bronze
金文
Shang–Zhou
Qin slips
秦系簡牘
Qin
Small seal
說文小篆
Shuowen, c. 100 CE
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
Written form — n/a
Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
Wiktionary: 校