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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

群

qún
group; crowd; flock; herd; pack
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 羊
  • 13 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡlun): phonetic 君 (OC *klun) + semantic 羊 – a herd of sheep; a group.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m-kul (“twenty; all”); cognate with 昆 (OC *kuːn, “swarming”), Tibetan ཀུན (kun, “all”), Burmese အကုန် (a.kun, “all”) (Benedict, 1972; STEDT).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*m-kul “twenty; all”
  • soundChinese君 “sovereign; monarch; ruler; chief; prince; lord”
    • soundChinese尹 “to govern; oversee”
      • ideaChinese丿 “left-falling stroke, usually read as 撇”
      • ideaChinese又 “again; once more”
    • meaningChinese口 “mouth, especially the lips and internal mouth cavity (Classifier: 把 c)”
  • meaningChinese羊 “caprid (e.g. sheep, goat, antelope, etc.) (Classifier: 隻／只 m c)”

Related: Tibetan ཀུན, Burmese အကုန်

Words built on it: 人群

Meanings

character
  1. group; crowd; flock; herd; pack
  2. multitude; many people
  3. group
  4. group (of a group chat)
  5. numerous; many
  6. to amass; to collect; to gather

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 同類聚在一起的人或物。 例：鳥群、離群索居、鶴立雞群
  2. 成群的。 例：群島、群峰、群居
  3. 眾多。 例：群英、群經諸子
  4. 量詞。計算群聚的人或物的單位。 例：一群牛、一群小孩

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

How 群 was written 字形演變

  1. 群 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 群 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 群 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 群 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 群 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 群