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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

濟

/t͡ɕi⁵¹/
to cross a river; to ferry
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • radical 水
  • 17 strokes

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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ʔsliːlʔ, *ʔsliːls): semantic 水 (“water”) + phonetic 齊 (OC *zliːl, *zliːls).

Austroasiatic. Possible base form, without nominal n-infix, of 西 (OC *snə̂i) (Schuessler, 2007). However, see there for other etymologies.

津 (OC *ʔslin) is its n-nominalized derivative (ibid.).

Etymology 3

Yue-Hashimoto (1976) relates it to Proto-Tai *ʰlaːjᴬ (“many; much”), whence Zhuang lai. This Tai word is probably related to 多 (OC *ʔl'aːl) (Schuessler, 2007).

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齊 “even; uniform; of equal length”

Related: Proto-Tai *ʰlaːjᴬ, Zhuang lai

Meanings

character
  1. to cross a river; to ferry
  2. to help; to aid; to relieve
  3. to be of help; useful

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

濟：水。出常山房子贊皇山，東入泜。从水齊聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 救助。 例：救濟、濟助、濟弱扶傾
  2. 助益。 例：無濟於事
  3. 過河、渡河。 例：同舟共濟

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

How 濟 was written 字形演變

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