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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

臭

/ʈ͡ʂʰoʊ̯⁵¹/
bad smell
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 5
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 自
  • 10 strokes

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 犬 (“dog”) + 自 (“nose”), referring to the dog's strong sense of smell. Original form of 嗅 (OC *qʰlus, *qʰluŋs, “to smell”).

Schuessler (2007) considers it to be cognate with 犨 (OC *kʰju, “sound of an ox breathing”) and connects it to Burmese ဟိုက် (huik, “to pant”).

Also compare 朽 (OC *qʰluʔ, “to rot; to decay”) (Baxter and Sagart, 2014).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese犬 “dog”
  • ideaChinese自 “self, oneself; one's own”

Related: Burmese ဟိုက်

Meanings

character
  1. bad smell
  2. bad name; bad reputation
  3. smelly; stinky
  4. ugly; repulsive
  5. fiercely
  6. bad; poor (luck, skill, etc)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

臭：禽走，臭而知其迹者，犬也。从犬从自。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 難聞的氣味。與「香」相對。 例：腥臭、口臭、銅臭
  2. 味道難聞的。 例：臭汗、臭屁、臭水溝
  3. 醜惡的、令人厭惡的。 例：他整天擺著一張臭臉。
  4. 惡名，不好的名聲。 例：遺臭萬年
  5. 形容程度激烈。 例：臭罵一頓

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

How 臭 was written 字形演變

  1. 臭 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 臭 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 臭 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 臭 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 臭 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 臭 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: 臭