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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

糖

táng
sugar
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 米
  • 16 strokes
  • 餹
  • 𥼽
  • 𰪩
  • 𥹥

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *l'aːŋ): semantic 米 (“rice”) + phonetic 唐 (OC *ɡl'aːŋ).

Original meaning was “sweet rice cake” or “sugar syrup”. Cognate with 餳 (OC *ljaːŋ).

Compare Proto-Lingao lhaŋ² ("sugar"), whence Lincheng /haŋ˧/, Qiongshan /liaŋ˩˧/.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese米 “hulled or husked uncooked rice (Classifier: 粒 m c mn; 顆／颗 m)”
  • soundChinese唐 “to boast; to talk big; to exaggerate”

Meanings

character
  1. sugar
  2. saccharide; carbohydrate
  3. to preserve food in alcohol or alcohol dregs
  4. loveable and likeable, cute
  5. HRT (hormone replacement therapy) drugs, especially pills

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

糖：飴也。从米唐聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 由甘蔗、甜菜、米、麥等提煉製成的甜性物質。 例：蔗糖、紅糖、麥芽糖
  2. 用糖製成的食品。 例：花生糖、巧克力糖
  3. 甜的。 例：糖味、糖姐兒

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

How 糖 was written 字形演變

  1. 糖 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 糖 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: 糖