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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

秋

qiū
harvest season
  • pictogram
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 禾
  • 9 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
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  • meaning component
  • sound component
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Origin

The oracle bone forms and bronze inscriptions show the pictogram (象形) of a cricket or a locust, sometimes with a fire 火 glyph underneath. In its later form, became a Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *sʰɯw): semantic 禾 (“grain”) + abbreviated phonetic 𤒅. Often thought of as an Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 禾 (“grain”) + 火 (“fire”); after harvesting the grain, the fields are burned to kill locusts and their eggs.

Unclear.

Schuessler (2007) minimally reconstructs Old Chinese *tshiu < Proto-Chinese *C-nh(i)u and proposes its cognacy to either:

* 收 (OC *(n)hiu, “to reap, harvest, gather”); or

* 卒 (OC *tsut, “to finish, end, die”), as vegetation dies in autumn; additionally in Zuozhuan, this word's referent was winter's dead vegetation.

Alternatively, Sagart (2023b) relates 秋 (OC *tsʰiw) to 揫 (OC *[dz]iw, “to collect, bring together”), whose Old Chinese reconstruction should possibly be amended to *m-tsʰiw or *m-tsiw.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese禾 “grain; cereal”
  • soundChinese𤒅
  • ideaChinese火 “fire; flame (Classifier: 把 m; 團／团 m)”

Words built on it: 秋天

Meanings

character
  1. harvest season
  2. autumn; fall
  3. year
  4. period; time
  5. autumn crops
  6. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

秋：禾穀孰也。从禾，𤒅省聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 一年四季中的第三季。農曆為七、八、九月，陽曆為九、十、十一月。 例：秋天、深秋、一葉知秋
  2. 年。古代年的長度以二次秋收為準，故以秋代表年。 例：一日不見，如隔三秋。
  3. 時候、緊要關頭。 例：多事之秋、危急存亡之秋
  4. 姓。

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

How 秋 was written 字形演變

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