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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

育

/y⁵¹/
to give birth to
  • HSK 2
  • radical 肉
  • 7 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Evolved geometrically from 胄 (*l'ɯwɢs) in Han dynasty era (Liu, 2023).

Before that, Pronunciation 1 was written as 毓; see there for more.

Schuessler, 2007 compares Jingpho [script needed] (lu³¹, “to give birth (to a child)”), based on Zhengzhang's Old Chinese reconstruction; however, Baxter and Sagart's reconstruction makes a connection doubtful. For the B-S reconstruction, note similarities to Burmese မွေး (mwe:, “to give birth, raise”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese亠 “couvercle (Kangxi radical)”
  • partChinese厶 “private”
  • partChinese月 “moon (Classifier: 輪／轮 m)”

Related: Burmese မွေး

Words built on it: 教育, 培育

Meanings

character
  1. to give birth to
  2. to raise; to bring up; to rear
  3. to educate
  4. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

育：養子使作善也。从𠫓肉聲。《虞書》曰：“教育子。”

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 婦女生產。 例：節育
  2. 培養成長。 例：化育、教育

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

How 育 was written 字形演變

  1. 育 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 育 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 育 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 育 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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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: 育