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

矮

ǎi

short

Phono-semantic compound 形聲
HSK 4
TOCFL 2
radical 矢
13 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *qraːlʔ): semantic 矢 + phonetic 委 (OC *qrol, *qrolʔ).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

meaningChinese矢 “arrow”
soundChinese委 “to entrust; to appoint; to send; to commission”
- soundChinese禾 “grain; cereal”
- meaningChinese女 “woman; (only of humans in Standard Chinese) female”

Meanings

character

short
low (of less than normal height)
to fall short (compared to someone else)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

矮：短人也。从矢委聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

身材短小。與「高」相對。例：矮小、矮人、矮胖
低的、不高的。與「高」相對。例：矮牆、矮簷、矮凳　◎

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

How 矮 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
說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
Wiktionary: 矮