源etymfun
About

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

翻

fān
to fly; to circle in the air; to soar; to flutter
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 羽
  • 18 strokes

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
React Flow
Press enter or space to select a node. You can then use the arrow keys to move the node around. Press delete to remove it and escape to cancel.
Press enter or space to select an edge. You can then press delete to remove it or escape to cancel.

點擊節點放大 · Click a node to zoom in

Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *pʰan): phonetic 番 (OC *paːl, *paːls, *pʰaːn, *pʰan, *ban) + semantic 羽 (“wings”) – to flutter.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese番 “to do in turns; to take turns; to repeat”
    • soundChinese釆 “to distinguish; to discriminate”
    • meaningChinese田 “farmland (Classifier: 塊／块 m c)”
  • meaningChinese羽 “feather; plume”

Meanings

character
  1. to fly; to circle in the air; to soar; to flutter
  2. to flip over; to turn over; to reverse; to toss
  3. to climb over or into; to cross over
  4. to rummage through; to look through
  5. to leaf through; to scan
  6. to change

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

翻：飛也。从羽番聲。或从飛。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 因反轉、歪倒，而使上、下或內、外的位置對調。 例：翻身、翻車、人仰馬翻　◎
  2. 掀動。 例：翻書、翻報紙
  3. 改變。 例：翻案、翻臉、花樣翻新
  4. 越過。 例：翻山越嶺
  5. 將某種語言文字譯成另一種語言文字。 例：我把這段英文翻成中文。

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

How 翻 was written 字形演變

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