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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

牆

qiáng
wall (Classifier: 面 m; 堵 m mn; 埲 c; 幅 c)
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 爿
  • 17 strokes
  • 廧
  • 𪪞

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *zaŋ): phonetic 爿 (OC *braːn, *zaŋ) + semantic 嗇 (“wheat in a granary”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese爿 “piece of wood or bamboo (made by chopping)”
  • meaningChinese嗇 “to reap”
    • ideaChinese來 “to come; to arrive”
    • ideaChinese㐭 “original form of 廩／廪 (lǐn, “granary”)”

Meanings

character
  1. wall (Classifier: 面 m; 堵 m mn; 埲 c; 幅 c)
  2. Great Firewall
  3. (the Great Firewall) to censor; to block (a website)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

牆：垣蔽也。从嗇爿聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 用磚、石等作成，用以間隔或障蔽的建築物。 例：圍牆、城牆、磚牆
  2. 泛指像牆的物品。 例：電視牆

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

How 牆 was written 字形演變

  1. 牆 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 牆 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 牆 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 牆 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 牆 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: 牆