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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

瓶

píng
bottle; vase; jar; flask
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 瓦
  • 11 strokes
  • 缾

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *beːŋ): phonetic 并 (OC *peŋ, *peŋs) + semantic 瓦 (“earthenware”). According to the radical, it originally indicates an earthenware vessel, i.e., not a glass bottle. It had a long slender neck opening up to a narrow mouth. However, 瓶 was also part of ritual bronzes in ancient China, hence it was made of bronze when used during rituals.

Today, it indicates bottles of any kind and dimension.

Austroasiatic; compare Khmer ពីង (piing, “swollen, potbellied, earthen water pot”) (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese并 “(geography) Bing Province (province in ancient China)”
  • meaningChinese瓦 “earthenware; earthenware pottery”

Related: Khmer ពីង

Meanings

character
  1. bottle; vase; jar; flask
  2. Classifier for bottled objects: bottle ⇒ all nouns using this classifier

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 泛指頸長、腹大，可用來裝液體的容器。 例：花瓶、酒瓶　◎
  2. 量詞。計算瓶裝物的單位。 例：兩瓶啤酒、一瓶紹興酒

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

How 瓶 was written 字形演變

  1. 瓶 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 瓶 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 瓶 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 瓶 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 瓶