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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

縣

xiàn
district; prefecture
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • radical 糸
  • 16 strokes

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 目 + 木 + 糸 - to hang with the string 糸 by the head 目 (using an eye to represent a head) on a tree 木. Originally referred to 懸 (OC *ɡʷeːn, “to hang”); later jiajie (假借) for 縣 (OC *ɡʷeːn, *ɡʷeːns, “administrative division”).

In Qin bamboo slip scripts, some of 目 + 木 were corrupted to 県 (with one straight horizontal line rather than 𠃊) which interpreted to a reversed head 𥄉 by Shuowen, and 糸 was corrupted to 系.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese目 “eye (Classifier: 雙／双 mn-t)”
  • ideaChinese木 “tree; woody plant”
  • ideaChinese糸 “thin silk”

Meanings

character
  1. district; prefecture
  2. county (third level division that is now generally restricted to rural areas, contrasted with urban districts (區／区 (qū)))
  3. county (first level division that used to be under the jurisdiction of a province but are now directly administered by the central government)
  4. regency
  5. prefecture
  6. county (second level division under the jurisdiction of a state, excluding Alaska and Louisiana)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

縣：繫也。从系持𥄉。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 地方政府的行政區域名稱。古時隸屬州、府、道，今在省之下、鄉鎮之上。 例：雲林縣、嘉義縣

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

How 縣 was written 字形演變

  1. 縣 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 縣 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 縣 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 縣 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 縣 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: 縣