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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

美

měi
beautiful; pretty; attractive; good-looking
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 羊
  • 9 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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Origin

Pictogram (象形) – a person (大) wearing a headdress (now written 羊) of feathers or ram's horn.

The modern form could be considered an ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 羊 (“ram or feathers”) + 大 (“person”).

See also 敖, 冒, and 免.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m(r)əj (“beautiful, well, perfectly”) (STEDT, under PTB *mway).

According to Schuessler (2007), cognate with Mizo mawi (“beautiful, lovely”), Jingpho moi (“perfectly, beautifully”) as well as Karbi me- (“be good”) and Jingpho cha mai (“good”); the former two items from *moy "beautiful" and the latter from *may "good, well", which were two roots reconstructed separately by Benedict (1972).

(Maybe related to "媚"?)

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • derivedProto-Sino-Tibetan*m(r)əj “beautiful, well, perfectly”
  • ideaChinese羊 “caprid (e.g. sheep, goat, antelope, etc.) (Classifier: 隻／只 m c)”
  • ideaChinese大 “of great size; big; large; huge”

Related: Mizo mawi, Jingpho moi, Karbi me-, Jingpho cha mai

Words built on it: 美國, 美好, 完美, 美元, 美食, 美女

Meanings

character
  1. beautiful; pretty; attractive; good-looking
  2. delicious; tasty; flavoursome
  3. good; fine; satisfactory; happy
  4. to beautify; to prettify
  5. to praise; to commend
  6. to be pleased with oneself

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

美：甘也。从羊从大。羊在六畜主給膳也。美與善同意。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 形貌漂亮、好看的。與「醜」相對。 例：美貌、美景、美麗
  2. 使變美麗。 例：養顏美容
  3. 美國的簡稱。 例：他打算畢業後赴美深造。
  4. 美洲的簡稱。 例：北美、南美

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

How 美 was written 字形演變

  1. 美 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 美 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 美 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 美 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 美 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 美