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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

歸

guī
to return (to a place); to come back to
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 7
  • radical 止
  • 18 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 𠂤 (“ancient form of 師 (“troops”)”) + 帚 (“broom; sweep”) – to eradicate the enemy and return.

Some analyse the 帚 component in the oracle bone script as a ligature of 止 (“to stop, to cease”) and 方 (“peripheral tribes”), i.e. “(of tribes in the periphery) to cease enmity and submit”.

A 止 (“foot”) or 辵 (“walking”) component was further added in the bronze inscriptions.

Shuowen deems 𠂤 to be the phonetic component of this character.

Starostin and Schuessler (2007) consider this a possible derivative of 回 (OC *ɡuːl, “to revolve; to return”). Compared with Tibetan འཁོར ('khor, “circle; turn; to turn round; to return”) by Xue (2001) and Wang (2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese𠂤 “ancient form of 師 (“troops”)”
  • ideaChinese帚 “broom; broomstick”
    • componentChinese肀 “hand grabbing hair”
    • componentChinese冖 “cover”
    • componentChinese巾 “a square item of cloth; towel; kerchief”

Related: Tibetan འཁོར

Meanings

character
  1. to return (to a place); to come back to
  2. to return to (a person, a status); to revert to
  3. to submit to; to seek patronage
  4. to tend towards; to converge
  5. to belong to
  6. to be regardless of; to treat separately

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

歸：女嫁也。从止，从婦省，𠂤聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 贈送。通「饋」。 例：陽貨欲見孔子，孔子不見，歸孔子豚。（《論語．陽貨》）

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

How 歸 was written 字形演變

  1. 歸 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 歸 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 歸 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 歸 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 歸 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 歸 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: 歸