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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

樓

lóu
building (of two or more stories) (Classifier: 棟／栋 m c; 幢 m; 躉／趸 c; 間／间 c)
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 木
  • 15 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡ·roː): semantic 木 (“tree”) + phonetic 婁 (OC *ɡ·roː, *ɡ·ro).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
  • soundChinese婁 “the constellation Lóu, one of the twenty-eight lunar mansions”
    • meaningChinese爪 “claw (of animal, bird); talon; paw; nail”
    • ideaChinese母 “mother”
    • soundChinese角 “horn; antler”
    • ideaChinese中 “middle; center”
    • meaningChinese女 “woman; (only of humans in Standard Chinese) female”

Meanings

character
  1. building (of two or more stories) (Classifier: 棟／栋 m c; 幢 m; 躉／趸 c; 間／间 c)
  2. floor; level (Classifier: 層／层)
  3. flat; apartment (Classifier: 層／层 c)
  4. superstructure
  5. Used in the name of some businesses
  6. firm

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

樓：重屋也。从木婁聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 兩層或兩層以上的房屋。 例：樓房、高樓大廈
  2. 樓房的一層。 例：一樓、第五樓
  3. 在樓房中的辦公室。 例：律師樓、寫字樓
  4. 姓。

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

How 樓 was written 字形演變

  1. 樓 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  2. 樓 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 樓 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: 樓