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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

物

wù
thing, matter
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • radical 牛
  • 8 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *mɯd): semantic 牛 + phonetic 勿 (OC *mɯd).

Compare Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(m/b)rəw (“grain; seed; lineage”) (STEDT), whence Tibetan འབྲུ ('bru, “seed; grain”), Jingpho amyu (ə myú, “kind; sort”), Burmese မျိုး (myui:, “seed”). Within Sinitic, compare 苗 (OC *mrew, “seedling, sprout”), 麰 (OC *mu, “barley”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese牛 “bovine, e.g. cow, bull, ox, buffalo, bison, yak (Classifier: 頭／头 m c mb md; 條／条 m g h x; 隻／只 m c g …”
  • soundChinese勿 “do not; don't”

Related: Tibetan འབྲུ, Jingpho amyu, Burmese မျိုး

Words built on it: 食物, 人物, 植物, 事物

Meanings

character
  1. thing, matter
  2. all of the outside world, excluding oneself
  3. substance, content
  4. to choose, to select
  5. to seek, to look for
  6. to do

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

物：萬物也。牛爲大物；天地之𢿙，起於牽牛，故从牛。勿聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 存在於天地間的一切東西。 例：貨物、人物、萬物
  2. 指我以外的人、事、境界。 例：待人接物、物我兩忘
  3. 指作品或言談中的內容、實質。 例：言之有物

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

How 物 was written 字形演變

  1. 物 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 物 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 物 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 物 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 物