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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

沙

shā
sand (Classifier: 粒 c mn)
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 水
  • 7 strokes

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 水 (“water”) + 少 (“dots”) — sand on a shoreline.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s(r)aj (“earth, sand”). Compare Tibetan ས (sa, “sand”) and Burmese သဲ (sai:, “sand”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*s(r)aj “earth, sand”
  • ideaChinese水 “water (Classifier: 瓶 m; 樽 c; 滴 m c; 池 m c; 盆 m c; 杯 m c)”
  • ideaChinese少 “few; little in number; less; not many”

Related: Tibetan ས, Burmese သဲ

Words built on it: 沙漠, 沙子

Meanings

character
  1. sand (Classifier: 粒 c mn)
  2. shoal
  3. something granular
  4. mushy and rough (as sand), texture of a watermelon of good quality.
  5. hoarse; husky
  6. the number 10⁻⁸

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

沙：水𢿱石也。从水从少。水少沙見。楚東有沙水。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 細碎的石粒。 例：海沙、泥沙、飛沙走石　△沙子
  2. 細碎而呈顆粒狀的東西。 例：豆沙、鐵沙、金沙
  3. 表面有顆粒而不光滑的。 例：沙紙
  4. 聲音不清脆、不響亮。 例：沙啞
  5. 瓜果過度成熟，肉質鬆散而呈微粒狀。 例：沙瓤
  6. 姓。

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

How 沙 was written 字形演變

  1. 沙 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 沙 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 沙 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 沙 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: 沙