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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

殺

shā
to kill; to murder
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 5
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 殳
  • 11 strokes
  • 閷
  • 𰿳

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Etymology 1

In the oracle bone script, it was an ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意) of a boar that had been impaled in the head.

In the seal script, the original compound was corrupted into 𣏂 (sometimes written as 杀). It was also in the seal script that the pictogram (象形): 人 (“person”) + 又 (“right hand”), which was later corrupted into 殳 (“spear”) or 攴, was added under the head of the boar to specify the killing was done by a person.

The modern-day character inherits this and can be thought of as a phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *sreːds, *sreːd): phonetic 𣏂 + semantic 殳 (“spear”).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g/b-sat (“to kill”); compare Tibetan བསད (bsad), perfect of Tibetan གསོད (gsod, “to kill”), Proto-Lolo-Burmese *C-sat (“to kill”), Japhug sat (“to kill”) (STEDT; Schuessler, 2007; Zhang, Jacques and Lai, 2019).

Etymology 2

From 衰 (OC *sʰrol, *srul, “to diminish; to decay”) + final *-t (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*g/b-sat “to kill”
  • componentChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • soundChinese𣏂
  • componentChinese又 “again; once more”
  • 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)”
  • partChinese衰 “to grow weak; to decrease in strength; to decline”
  • partChinesefinal “final; final examination”
    • derivedEnglishfinal “A final examination; a test or examination given at the end of a term or class; the test that concl…”
      • inheritedMiddle Englishfinal

Related: Tibetan བསད, Tibetan གསོད, Proto-Lolo-Burmese *C-sat

Meanings

character
  1. to kill; to murder
  2. to ruin; to harm
  3. to fight
  4. to cut; to slice (fruit, food)
  5. to abate; to reduce
  6. to sting

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

殺：戮也。从殳杀聲。凡殺之屬皆从殺。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 等差。 例：其族食世降一等，親親之殺也。（《禮記．文王世子》）

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

How 殺 was written 字形演變

  1. 殺 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 殺 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 殺 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 殺 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 殺 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: 殺