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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

法

fǎ
law; rule; regulation; statute
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • radical 水
  • 8 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Earliest attested on the late Shang bronze 作册般銅黿. phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, *pap): semantic 氵 (“water”) + semantic 廌 (“a type of antelope or caprid”) + abbreviated phonetic 盍 (*gˤap). Later, 廌 (zhì) was omitted.

In bronze inscriptions, mostly used for 廢 (OC *pas, “to cast aside; to waste”):

A notable exception is the early Western Zhou 大盂鼎, where 灋 is analyzed as 廢 in the sense of "great" (per Erya 《釋詁》：「廢，大也。」):

Sino-Tibetan. Cognate with Tibetan བབས (babs, “shape, form, appearance”), དབྱིབས (dbyibs, “shape, form, figure”), Burmese ပုံ (pum, “shape, form”). Possibly cognate with 凡 (OC *bom, “all, general, every; pattern, general rule”); see there for more.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese水 “water (Classifier: 瓶 m; 樽 c; 滴 m c; 池 m c; 盆 m c; 杯 m c)”
  • meaningChinese廌 “a kind of small deer-like ungulate, antelope”
  • soundChinese盍 “why; how”

Related: Tibetan བབས, Burmese ပုံ

Words built on it: 方法, 想法, 法律, 看法, 做法, 合法, 法院, 法官, 辦法, 無法

Meanings

character
  1. law; rule; regulation; statute
  2. system; institution
  3. norm; standard; model; example
  4. to imitate; to emulate
  5. method; way; solution
  6. dharma; principle of the universe; teachings of Buddha

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 律令。 例：法令、法律
  2. 範式、原則、道理。 例：文法、說法、佛法
  3. 途徑。 例：方法、辦法
  4. 方術、技巧。 例：魔法、道士作法
  5. 仿效。 例：效法
  6. 可為法則的。 例：法帖

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

How 法 was written 字形演變

  1. 法 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 法 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 法 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 法 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 法 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 法