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

聊

liáo

to chat

Phono-semantic compound 形聲
HSK 6
TOCFL 4
radical 耳
11 strokes
⿰⿼干丨了

Etymology graph

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *m·rɯːw): semantic 耳 (“ear”) + phonetic 卯 (OC *mruːʔ). According to Shuowen, the original meaning was "tinnitus".

Cognate with 翏 (OC *ɡ·rɯːw, *ɡ·rɯws, “whistling of the wind”) (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

meaningChinese耳 “ear”
soundChinese卯 “fourth of twelve earthly branches (十二支)”

Meanings

character

to chat
to rely on
somewhat; slightly; at least
for the time being; tentatively

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

聊：耳鳴也。从耳卯聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

閒談。例：聊天、閒聊
稍微、姑且。例：聊備一格、聊表寸心、聊表心意
憑藉、依賴。例：無聊、民不聊生、百無聊賴

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

How 聊 was written 字形演變

Small seal
說文小篆
Shuowen, c. 100 CE
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: 聊