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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

涼

liáng
cool; cold
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 水
  • 11 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡ·raŋ, *ɡ·raŋs, *ɡ·raŋs): semantic 氵 (“water”) + phonetic 京 (OC *kraŋ).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m/s-glak ~ m-glaŋ (“cold; freeze”). Cognate with 霜 (OC *sraŋ, “frost”), Tibetan གྲང་ (grang, “cold”). According to Schuessler (2007), this etymon seems to have a wider distribution: Compare Austroasiatic Kharia raŋga (“cold; freeze”), Khmer រងា (rɔɔrɔngiə, “cold”).

A derivative is probably 凔 (OC *sʰaːŋ, “cold”). A vocalic variant is 冷 (OC *raːŋʔ, *reːŋ, *reːŋʔ, “cold”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*m/s-glak ~ m-glaŋ “cold; freeze”
  • meaningChinese水 “water (Classifier: 瓶 m; 樽 c; 滴 m c; 池 m c; 盆 m c; 杯 m c)”
  • soundChinese京 “capital (city)”

Related: Tibetan གྲང་, Kharia raŋga, Khmer រងា

Meanings

character
  1. cool; cold
  2. discouraged; disheartened
  3. forlorn
  4. heat-preventing
  5. be done for; be finished or destroyed; gone for the dogs; curtains (for someone)
  6. free from worry; congenial

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

涼：薄也。从水京聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 將物品放在通風處，使熱度降低。 例：暴涼

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

How 涼 was written 字形演變

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