源etymfun
About

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

笨

bèn
heavy; cumbersome; strenuous
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 竹
  • 11 strokes
  • 賁
  • 蕡
  • 体
  • 贲
  • 𰱟

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
React Flow
Press enter or space to select a node. You can then use the arrow keys to move the node around. Press delete to remove it and escape to cancel.
Press enter or space to select an edge. You can then press delete to remove it or escape to cancel.

點擊節點放大 · Click a node to zoom in

Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *pɯːnʔ, *bɯːnʔ): semantic 竹 + phonetic 本 (OC *pɯːnʔ).

Cognate with Tibetan བླུན (blun, “foolish; stupid; dull”) (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese竹 “bamboo (Classifier: 枝; 棵 m; 根 m; 轆／辘 c)”
  • soundChinese本 “root; stem”

Related: Tibetan བླུན

Meanings

character
  1. heavy; cumbersome; strenuous
  2. stupid; foolish; silly; slow-witted
  3. clumsy; awkward
  4. inner part of bamboo

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

笨：竹裏也。从竹本聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 記憶和理解能力不好。 例：愚笨
  2. 不靈巧、不靈活。 例：笨手笨腳
  3. 粗大、不精細。 例：笨重

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

How 笨 was written 字形演變

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