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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

病

bìng
illness; sickness; disease
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 疒
  • 10 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *braŋs): semantic 疒 (“sickness”) + phonetic 丙 (OC *pqraŋʔ) – illness. Note that 丙 also means “fire”, hence connotations of “lying feverishly in bed”.

Cognate with 怲 (OC *praŋʔ, *praŋs, “to worry”) (Schuessler, 2007). This may be part of larger word family including 炳 (OC *praŋʔ, “bright”) with the basic meaning of “warm; hot” (ibid.). It has also been connected with 傷 (OC *hljaŋ) (Unger, 1986).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese疒 “to be ill”
  • soundChinese丙 “the third of the ten heavenly stems”

Words built on it: 病人, 生病, 看病, 毛病, 病毒, 瘋, 疾病

Meanings

character
  1. illness; sickness; disease
  2. evil; ill; malady
  3. fault; flaw; defect
  4. to fall ill; to be sick; to be ill
  5. to injure; to do harm to
  6. distress; disapproval

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

病：疾加也。从疒丙聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 生物體發生不健康的現象。包括生理或心理方面產生不正常的狀態。 例：疾病、肝病、心病
  2. 有病的。 例：病容、病人、病夫
  3. 生病、患病。 例：她病了三天，變得相當憔悴。
  4. 瑕疵、短處。 例：語病、毛病、弊病
  5. 責備。 例：詬病、世所共病

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

How 病 was written 字形演變

  1. 病 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  2. 病 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 病 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 病 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: 病