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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

眾

zhòng
masses; people; multitude; crowd; everyone
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 3
  • radical 目
  • 11 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
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Origin

Pictogram (象形): a sun (日) above three humans (㐺) – people gathered or working under the sun.

The top, originally 日 (“sun”) in oracle script has been modified, in bronze script resembling instead a horizontal eye (early form of 目) – reinterpreted as “a crowd under someone’s gaze”, and now resembles 罒.

The bottom, originally three figures (人人人), uses various forms of 人 and 亻, with variation depending on font.

Possibly from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-toŋ (“thousand”) (Peiros and Starostin, 1996; STEDT); if so, cognate with Tibetan སྟོང (stong, “thousand”), Burmese ထောင် (htaung, “thousand”), Drung tu (“thousand”), Nuosu ꄙ (dur, “thousand”).

Alternatively, Schuessler (2007) compares this word with Classical Tibetan [script needed] (yong, “in all, at all times, ever before”) and Tibetan ཡོངས (yongs, “all, whole”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese网 “net”
  • partChinese丿 “left-falling stroke, usually read as 撇”
  • partChinese丨 “To connect vertically; to pass through from top to bottom.”
  • partChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”

Related: Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-toŋ, Tibetan སྟོང, Burmese ထောင်, Drung tu, Nuosu ꄙ, Tibetan ཡོངས

Meanings

character
  1. masses; people; multitude; crowd; everyone
  2. everything; all matters
  3. all the government officials
  4. soldier; army; troops
  5. slave labour in agriculture
  6. number of monks

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

眾：多也。从乑、目，衆意。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 許多的人。 例：群眾、觀眾、眾叛親離
  2. 數量多。與「寡」相對。 例：眾多、眾人、眾說紛紜

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

How 眾 was written 字形演變

  1. 眾 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 眾 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 眾 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 眾 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 眾 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 眾 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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 眾