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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

測

cè
to fathom; to sound; to measure depth
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 7
  • radical 水
  • 12 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *sʰrɯɡ): semantic 氵 (“water”) + phonetic 則 (OC *ʔsɯːɡ) — to measure the depth of water.

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則 “rule; law; regulation”
    • ideaChinese鼎 “ding (ancient large, three-legged bronze cauldron for cooking or sacrificial rituals)”
    • ideaChinese刀 “knife; blade (Classifier: 把 m c g h j mb md w x; 張／张 c h; 叢／丛 mn; 支 mn mn-t)”

Meanings

character
  1. to fathom; to sound; to measure depth
  2. to measure; to gauge; to survey
  3. to predict; to anticipate; to expect
  4. to surmise; to speculate; to conjecture; to suppose
  5. deep
  6. clear

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

測：深所至也。从水則聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 量度。 例：目測、深不可測
  2. 推想、揣度。 例：揣測、變化莫測

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

How 測 was written 字形演變

  1. 測 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 測 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 測 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: 測