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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

範

fàn
mould
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • radical 竹
  • 15 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *bomʔ): semantic 車 (“carriage”) + abbreviated phonetic 笵 (OC *bomʔ).

Compare perhaps Burmese ပုံ (pum, “shape, form, figure”) (Luce, 1981); the Burmese form is connected by Schuessler, 2007 to 凡 (OC *bom, “general, worldly”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese車 “land vehicle; (specifically) car (Classifier: 輛／辆 m; 部 m c; 臺／台 m mn; 架 c; 頂／顶 mn; 張／张 mn-t; 乘 m)”
  • soundChinese笵
    • meaningChinese竹 “bamboo (Classifier: 枝; 棵 m; 根 m; 轆／辘 c)”
    • soundChinese氾 “a place in modern Henan”

Related: Burmese ပုံ

Words built on it: 范

Meanings

character
  1. mould
  2. pattern; model
  3. boundary; rule; law
  4. to restrict; to restrain

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

範：範軷也。从車，笵省聲。讀與犯同。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 鑄造器物的模型。 例：銅範、錢範
  2. 法式、法則。 例：典範、規範
  3. 界限。 例：就範
  4. 可為法式的、可效法的。 例：範本、範文
  5. 防止、限制。 例：防範

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

How 範 was written 字形演變

  1. 範 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 範 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 範 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: 範