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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

湯

tāng
hot or boiling water
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 水
  • 12 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *l̥ʰaːŋ, *l̥ʰaːŋs, *hljaŋ): semantic 氵 (“water”) + phonetic 昜 (OC *laŋ).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-la(w)ŋ (“steam; hot (liquid)”); compare Tibetan རླངས (rlangs, “steam, vapour; steamy”) (Bodman, 1980; STEDT).

Related to 盪 (OC *l̥ʰaːŋ, *l̥ʰaːŋs, *l'aːŋʔ, “basin for holding hot water for washing; wash basin”), 煬 (OC *laŋ, *laŋs, “to heat; to roast”) (Wang, 1982; Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*r-la(w)ŋ “steam; hot (liquid)”
  • meaningChinese水 “water (Classifier: 瓶 m; 樽 c; 滴 m c; 池 m c; 盆 m c; 杯 m c)”
  • soundChinese昜 “sunshine”

Related: Tibetan རླངས

Meanings

character
  1. hot or boiling water
  2. broth; stock
  3. soup; water in which something has been boiled; beverage
  4. decoction of medicinal herbs
  5. hot spring
  6. dinner; meal

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

湯：熱水也。从水昜聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. →湯湯

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

How 湯 was written 字形演變

  1. 湯 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 湯 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 湯 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 湯 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 湯 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: 湯