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

瘦

shòu

thin; slender; skinny

Phono-semantic compound 形聲
HSK 5
TOCFL 2
radical 疒
15 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *srus): semantic 疒 + phonetic 叟 (OC *suːʔ).

Compare Burmese ရှူး (hru:, “to taper”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

meaningChinese疒 “to be ill”
soundChinese叟 “old man; old gentleman”
- ideaChinese宀 “a type of deep house with walls on all four sides, a roof, a main hall, and back rooms”
- ideaChinese火 “fire; flame (Classifier: 把 m; 團／团 m)”
- ideaChinese又 “again; once more”

Related: Burmese ရှူး

Meanings

character

thin; slender; skinny
lean
to lose weight; to become thin

國語辭典 definitions

體態不豐滿，脂肪少。與「胖」、「肥」相對。例：瘦弱、瘦小、骨瘦如柴　◎
土地貧瘠的。例：瘦土、瘦田
書法筆畫細。例：宋徽宗的字瘦而媚。

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

How 瘦 was written 字形演變

Small seal
說文小篆
Shuowen, c. 100 CE
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: 瘦