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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

紅

hóng
red
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 糸
  • 9 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡoːŋ): semantic 糸 (“silk”) + phonetic 工 (OC *koːŋ).

彤 (OC *l'uːŋ, “red”) could be a variant of 紅 (OC *ɡoːŋ) (Schuessler, 2007). May be related to 虹 (OC *kroːŋs, *ɡoːŋ, “rainbow”).

Originally referred to lighter shades of red; gradually replaced 赤 (chì, “red”) as the basic color term for "red".

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese糸 “thin silk”
  • soundChinese工 “labour; work (Classifier: 份 c)”

Meanings

character
  1. red
  2. popular; in vogue
  3. the red clothes and bunting used on festive occasions
  4. festive occasion; wedding
  5. revolutionary; Communist; Red
  6. bonus; extra dividend

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

紅：帛赤白色。从糸工聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 像鮮血的顏色。 例：血紅、鮮紅
  2. 紅色的。 例：紅花、紅豆
  3. 變紅、呈現紅色。 例：她被調侃兩句，就害羞臉紅了。
  4. 借指花朵。 例：殘紅、落紅
  5. 借指美女。 例：偎紅倚翠
  6. 顯耀、受到榮寵。 例：走紅、紅星、紅極一時

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

How 紅 was written 字形演變

  1. 紅 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  2. 紅 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 紅 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 紅 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: 紅