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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

空

kōng
empty; hollow; void
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 穴
  • 8 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kʰoːŋ, *kʰoːŋs): semantic 穴 (“cave, hole”) + phonetic 工 (OC *koːŋ).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(g/k)uŋ (“hole; orifice; inner part”). 孔 (OC *kʰloːŋʔ, “hole”) is probably the endoactive derivation of 空 (OC *kʰoːŋ, “hollow; empty”) (Schuessler, 2007). Cognate with Tibetan ཁུང (khung, “hole”), Jingpho ladi hku (“nostril”), Chepang घाङ् (gʰaŋ, “hole”), Burmese ခေါင်း (hkaung:, “cavity”), Naxi ko³³ (“cave; hole; pit”) (STEDT). See also 坑 (OC *kʰraːŋ, “pit”) and 肛 (OC *kroːŋ, *qʰroːŋ, “anus”), which may or may not be related.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese穴 “hole”
  • soundChinese工 “labour; work (Classifier: 份 c)”

Related: Tibetan ཁུང, Chepang घाङ्, Burmese ခေါင်း, Naxi ko³³

Words built on it: 航空, 天空, 空中, 太空, 空氣

Meanings

character
  1. empty; hollow; void
  2. exhausted; emptied
  3. open; spacious; vast
  4. quiet and still; secluded
  5. lacking substance; fictitious; fabricated
  6. hungry

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

空：竅也。从穴工聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 閒暇時間。 例：撥空、沒空、抽空
  2. 騰出空隙或空間。 例：再忙，也要空出一點時間陪陪孩子。
  3. 缺乏、短少。 例：虧空、空乏
  4. 尚未利用的，或缺少東西的。 例：空地、空位

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

How 空 was written 字形演變

  1. 空 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 空 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 空 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 空 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: 空