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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

米

mǐ
hulled or husked uncooked rice (Classifier: 粒 m c mn; 顆／颗 m)
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 米
  • 6 strokes

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
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Origin

Etymology 1

Pictogram (象形) – rice kernels without husk. The character 粟, by contrast, refers to rice kernels with husk. According to Li Xiaoding (李孝定), the horizontal stroke is a bamboo sieve (籭 or 篩子). See also the bottom component of 暴 in its original form.

Unrelated to 木, 禾, and 来.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mej (“grain”). Cognate with Garo mi (“rice”), Atong (India) mai (“rice”), Jingpho ma (“rice; paddy”), Rabha মাই (mai), Dimasa mai.

Etymology 2

Short for 米突 (mǐtū), from French mètre.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese丷 “Component variant of 八.”
  • partChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
  • derivedFrenchmètre
    • derivedAncient Greekμέτρον “measure, rule, length, size, poetic metre”
      • partProto-Indo-European*meh₁- “to measure”
      • partAncient Greek-τρον “a suffix used to form instrument nouns (pl.)”
    • borrowedLatinmetrum “meter”

Related: Garo mi, Atong (India) mai, Jingpho ma, Rabha মাই, Dimasa mai

Words built on it: 氣, 糖, 玉米, 迷, 粗, 康, 毫米

Meanings

character
  1. hulled or husked uncooked rice (Classifier: 粒 m c mn; 顆／颗 m)
  2. husked seed
  3. grain-like things
  4. money
  5. ten thousand of a currency designation; ten grand (Classifier: 粒 w)
  6. yuan (unit of CNY)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

米：粟實也。象禾實之形。凡米之屬皆从米。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 去掉殼或皮後的植物籽實。 例：小米、高粱米、花生米
  2. 特指稻穀去掉殼後的籽實。 例：米飯、巧婦難為無米之炊
  3. 像米粒樣的東西。 例：蝦米
  4. 借指飯食。 例：他病得很重，粒米未進。
  5. 量詞。計算長度的單位。一米等於一百公分。亦作「公尺」。§英meter
  6. 姓。

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

How 米 was written 字形演變

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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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: 米