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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

甜

tián
sweet; sugary; honeyed
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 甘
  • 11 strokes

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 舌 (“tongue”) + 甘 (“sweet”). Rearrangement of 甛.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ljam (“sweet; fragrant”) (STEDT). Compare Tibetan ཞིམ (zhim, “tasty”) (Coblin, 1986; Schuessler, 2007; Hill, 2019).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*ljam “sweet; fragrant”
  • ideaChinese舌 “tongue”
  • ideaChinese甘 “sweet”

Related: Tibetan ཞིམ

Meanings

character
  1. sweet; sugary; honeyed
  2. pleasant; comfortable; happy
  3. sound
  4. bland; tasteless; not salty
  5. delicious; tasty
  6. cheap; inexpensive

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 五味之一。像糖蜜的味道。與「苦」相對。 例：甜味、甜瓜、甜玉米
  2. 美好。 例：甜蜜、甜美、甜言蜜語
  3. 安穩、酣熟。 例：睡得香甜

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

How 甜 was written 字形演變

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