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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

業

yè
profession; business; trade
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 2
  • radical 木
  • 13 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

Various explanations exist:

* Pictogram (象形) – a beam from which bells and chimes hang.

* Pictogram (象形) – a person lifting said beam.

* Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 丵 (“chisel”) + 大 (“person; big”) – to launch a great attack.

Up until the Warring States period, the character was written doubled as 𪴨 and sometimes as 𫨱. The latter is a phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声) using 去 (the original form of 盍 (OC *ɡaːb)) as a phonetic component. In bamboo slips the vertical stroke of 丵 extended such that the bottom looks like 木.

; work; achievement

; large; terrific

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese丵 “grass that grow in clusters; thickly growing grass”
  • ideaChinese大 “of great size; big; large; huge”

Words built on it: 企業

Meanings

character
  1. profession; business; trade
  2. merits and achievements; work
  3. course of study
  4. property; estate
  5. lofty; large
  6. karma

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

業：大版也。所以飾縣鍾鼓。捷業如鋸齒，以白畫之。象其鉏鋙相承也。从丵从巾。巾象版。《詩》曰：“巨業維樅。”

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 工作門類。 例：農業、商業、各行各業
  2. 學習的內容或過程。 例：修業、結業、畢業
  3. 從事工作。 例：業農、業儒、業商
  4. 財產。 例：產業、祖業、家業
  5. 功績。 例：豐功偉業
  6. 佛教用語。指人的一切行為、思想、言語等。包括善惡兩面。 例：善業、惡業

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

How 業 was written 字形演變

  1. 業 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 業 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 業 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 業