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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

泡

/pʰɑʊ̯⁵⁵/
puffy, spongy, soft
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 6
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 水
  • 8 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *pʰruː, *m̥ʰruːs, *bruː): semantic 氵 (“water”) + phonetic 包 (OC *pruː). It conveys the meaning of “foam.”

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)”
  • soundChinese包 “to wrap up; to enwrap; to bundle up”

Meanings

character
  1. puffy, spongy, soft
  2. puffy, spongy or soft object
  3. bladder
  4. small lake
  5. Classifier for excreta.
  6. Rubus sp.

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

泡：水。出山陽平樂，東北入泗。从水包聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 在水面上漂浮，內含氣體的球狀物。 例：水泡、泡沫
  2. 指泡狀的東西。 例：肥皂泡、電燈泡
  3. 因皮膚受傷而起的水泡。 例：他的大腿被滾水燙到，已經起泡了。
  4. 用水沖浸。 例：泡飯、泡茶、泡衣服
  5. 消磨、耽擱或故意糾纏。 例：泡妞、泡時間
  6. 量詞。計算茶葉沖浸次數的單位。 例：這茶已經是第二泡。

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

How 泡 was written 字形演變

  1. 泡 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 泡 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: 泡