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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

胖

/pʰɑŋ⁵¹/
fat
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 肉
  • 9 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *pʰaːns): semantic 肉 + phonetic 半 (OC *paːns).

According to STEDT, possibly from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-bʷam ~ s-bʷap (“to swell; swollen, fat, thick; rounded part, mountain, hill”). Cognates include 墳 (OC *bɯn, *bɯnʔ, “bulge, mound”), possibly 芃 (OC *boːŋ, *bum, “luxuriant growth”), and, outside of Sinitic, Tibetan སྦོམ་ (sbom, “thick, bulky, fat”). A more distant cognate is Burmese ဝမ်း (wam:, “belly”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • derivedProto-Sino-Tibetan*s-bʷam ~ s-bʷap “to swell; swollen, fat, thick; rounded part, mountain, hill”
  • meaningChinese肉 “meat; flesh”
  • soundChinese半 “half”
    • ideaChinese八 “eight”
    • ideaChinese牛 “bovine, e.g. cow, bull, ox, buffalo, bison, yak (Classifier: 頭／头 m c mb md; 條／条 m g h x; 隻／只 m c g …”

Related: Tibetan སྦོམ་, Burmese ဝမ်း

Meanings

character
  1. fat

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

胖：半體肉也。一曰廣肉。从半从肉，半亦聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 體態豐滿、脂肪多。與「瘦」相對。 例：肥胖、胖娃兒　◎

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

How 胖 was written 字形演變

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