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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

腳

jiǎo
foot (Classifier: 隻／只 m c; 雙／双 m c; 對／对 c)
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 肉
  • 13 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kaɡ): semantic ⺼ (“meat, body”) + phonetic 卻 (OC *kaɡ, *kʰaɡ) – part of the body, the foot or leg.

Etymology unclear (Schuessler, 2007). Unrelated to Min 跤.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese肉 “meat; flesh”
  • soundChinese卻 “to withdraw; to retreat”
    • soundChinese𧮫 “palate; uraniscus; roof of mouth”
      • componentChinese⿱𠆢𠆢
      • componentChinese口 “mouth, especially the lips and internal mouth cavity (Classifier: 把 c)”
    • meaningChinese卩 “kneeling person”

Meanings

character
  1. foot (Classifier: 隻／只 m c; 雙／双 m c; 對／对 c)
  2. base; leg; foundation
  3. person who joins an activity

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

腳：脛也。从肉卻聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 人或動物的肢體中，支撐身體接觸地面的部分。 例：赤腳、跺腳、馬腳
  2. 物體的基部、下端。 例：牆腳、桌腳、山腳
  3. →腳色
  4. 量詞。計算用腳踢、踹、踩等動作的單位。 例：連踢三腳、踹了兩腳、踩了一腳

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

How 腳 was written 字形演變

  1. 腳 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  2. 腳 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 腳 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: 腳