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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

橋

qiáo
bridge (over a river) (Classifier: 座 m c mn; 道 m g; 條／条 c h mn mn-t; 戙 c; 板 h mn)
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 木
  • 16 strokes
  • 墧
  • 𰉩

Etymology graph

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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡrew): semantic 木 (“wood”) + phonetic 喬 (OC *krew, *ɡrew).

Possibly related to 撟 (OC *krew, *krewʔ, “to raise; to lift”), 高 (OC *kaːw, “high; tall”) (Liu, 1999).

Etymology 2

Changed tone variant of etymology 1.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
  • soundChinese喬 “tall; lofty”

Meanings

character
  1. bridge (over a river) (Classifier: 座 m c mn; 道 m g; 條／条 c h mn mn-t; 戙 c; 板 h mn)
  2. bridge-like object: footbridge; beam; crosspiece
  3. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

橋：水梁也。从木喬聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 架設在河道上接通兩方的建築物。 例：吊橋、獨木橋
  2. 似橋的建築物。 例：陸橋、天橋
  3. 比喻具有溝通功能的事物。 例：同心橋

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

How 橋 was written 字形演變

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