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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

票

piào
ticket; coupon (Classifier: 張／张 m)
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 示
  • 11 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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Origin

Simplified from 𤐫 (火 → 示 and 𢍱 → 覀). Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): semantic 火 (“fire”) + semantic 𢍱 (“to rise high”), which represents two pairs of hands holding and rising an object, perhaps a bag or basket (西). The character originally represented the idea of sparks rising up. By extension, it was also used to mean "token" or "label." Then, the two pair of hands disappeared in the modern version.

Unrelated to the original version of 要 and 栗.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • simplified fromChinese𤐫 “sparks of fire rising up”
  • meaningChinese火 “fire; flame (Classifier: 把 m; 團／团 m)”
  • meaningChinese𢍱 “to rise high”

Words built on it: 投票, 標

Meanings

character
  1. ticket; coupon (Classifier: 張／张 m)
  2. ballot; voting slip; vote (Classifier: 張／张 m)
  3. bank note; bill
  4. person held for ransom; hostage
  5. amateur performance of Chinese opera
  6. Classifier for shipments and business.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 紙幣。 例：鈔票
  2. 用來作為憑證的紙張。 例：股票、車票、戲票
  3. 稱被綁架的人質。 例：肉票、撕票
  4. 非職業性質的演出。 例：玩票、票戲
  5. 量詞

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

How 票 was written 字形演變

  1. 票 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 票 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 票