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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

段

duàn
section; piece; division
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 殳
  • 9 strokes

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Origin

In the bronze script it is a phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *doːns) and ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): phonetic 厂 (OC *hŋaːnʔ, *hŋaːns) + semantic 殳, showing a hammer in hand breaking a stone with fragments coming off (Li Xueqin, 2012); 殳 was the pictogram of a hammer and later was borrowed to indicate a bamboo halberd. Most of the character is identical to 叚.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese厂 “cliff; habitable cave on a cliff”
  • meaningChinese殳 “shu (an ancient Chinese weapon)”
    • ideaChinese𠘧 “used in 𠘧𠘧; refers to the wings of a bird in flight (according to the Shuowen Jiezi)”
    • ideaChinese又 “again; once more”

Words built on it: 手段

Meanings

character
  1. section; piece; division
  2. administrative unit; department (especially in railways)
  3. grade; level (in chess, martial arts, etc.)
  4. Classifier for a segment or section of something that is long: piece; segment
  5. Classifier for a distance or a period of time.
  6. Classifier for writing, speech, etc.

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

段：椎物也。从殳，耑省聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 工廠、工礦或鐵公路組織中的一種任務編組。 例：工務段、機務段
  2. 量詞
  3. 姓。

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

How 段 was written 字形演變

  1. 段 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 段 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 段 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: 段