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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

片

piàn
thin piece; flake; slice
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 片
  • 4 strokes

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Origin

Mirror image of 爿 (OC *braːn, “piece”), which is the pictogram of a bed.

Shuowen: half of 木 (“wood; tree”) to denote “to pare; to slice”; but this interpretation is not based on oracle bones and bronzes.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese丄 “up; above”
  • partChinese丿 “left-falling stroke, usually read as 撇”
  • partChinese㇆

Words built on it: 照片, 影片, 相片, 版, 牌

Meanings

character
  1. thin piece; flake; slice
  2. film; TV play; photograph; record
  3. film (form of mass media); movie (Classifier: 部 m; 套 c)
  4. video (Classifier: 條／条 c)
  5. tablet
  6. diaper; nappy (Classifier: 條／条 c)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

片：判木也。从半木。凡片之屬皆从片。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 薄而扁平的東西。 例：肉片、紙片、唱片
  2. 少數的、簡短的。 例：片刻、片簡殘牘、隻字片語
  3. 單一的。 例：片面
  4. 將刀橫著或斜著，把厚物切成薄片。 例：片魚、片肉　◎
  5. 量詞

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

How 片 was written 字形演變

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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 片