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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

窮

qióng
to exhaust
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 穴
  • 15 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡuŋ): semantic 穴 (“cave; nest; confinement”) + phonetic 躬 (OC *kuŋ).

Possibly a vocalic variant of 邛 (OC *ɡoŋ, “distress”) (Schuessler, 2007). See there for more.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese穴 “hole”
  • soundChinese躬 “body”
    • meaningChinese身 “body”
    • soundChinese弓 “bow (weapon) (Classifier: 張／张)”

Meanings

character
  1. to exhaust
  2. to thoroughly investigate
  3. to be in the wrong and unable to argue further
  4. to be in dire straits; to suffer from lack of opportunity, support, etc.
  5. poor; destitute; impoverished
  6. to be exhausted; to be used up

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 貧乏、貧困。 例：貧窮、窮人
  2. 困厄、不顯達。 例：窮則獨善其身，達則兼善天下。（《孟子．盡心上》）
  3. 盡、止。 例：趣味無窮、理屈詞窮、層出不窮
  4. 使達極端。 例：窮凶極惡、窮奢極侈
  5. 澈底。 例：窮究、窮追不捨
  6. 荒僻、偏遠。 例：窮鄉僻壤

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

How 窮 was written 字形演變

  1. 窮 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  2. 窮 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 窮 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 窮 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 窮