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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

草

cǎo
herbaceous plant; herb; weed; wort; grass; forb
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 艸
  • 10 strokes

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *sʰuːʔ): semantic 艹 (“grass; plant”) + phonetic 早 (OC *ʔsuːʔ). Originally referred to 皂, and later borrowed for the “grass” sense, replacing 艸.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-tswa-n (“grass”); cognate with Tibetan རྩྭ (rtswa, “grass”) (Schuessler, 2007; STEDT).

Alternatively, it may be related to 芻 (OC *sʰro, “hay”), from Austroasiatic; compare Mon ချဲ (“grass; weeds; hay”) (Schuessler, 2007).

Etymology 4

Orthographic borrowing from Japanese 草 (kusa, “LOL”). See the Japanese entry for more information.

As an interjection, this term is easily confused with the native “fuck” sense above. To distinguish between the two senses, 中國語／中国语 (Zhōngguóyǔ, “Chinese”) and 日本語／日本语 (Rìběnyǔ, “Japanese”) are usually put in parentheses following the term to specify which sense is intended.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*(r)tsuʔ “grass”
  • meaningChinese艸 “grass”
  • soundChinese早 “early; in advance; soon”
    • meaningChinese日 “Sun”
    • soundChinese棗 “jujube; Chinese date”
    • ideaChinese甲 “shell; carapace”
  • borrowedJapanese草 “LOL”

Related: Tibetan རྩྭ, Mon ချဲ

Words built on it: 萬, 草地, 華, 若, 草原, 藝

Meanings

character
  1. herbaceous plant; herb; weed; wort; grass; forb
  2. Used in names of some woody plants.
  3. straw
  4. marijuana; cannabis; weed
  5. countryside; wilderness
  6. common; ordinary

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

草：草斗，櫟實也。一曰象斗子。从艸早聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 草本植物的總稱。 例：草木、花草、碧草如茵
  2. 田野、荒野。 例：草澤、草莽
  3. 底稿、文稿。 例：起草、擬草、草稿
  4. 馬虎、粗率、不細膩。 例：潦草、草率
  5. 初步的、尚未決定的。 例：草案、草圖、草約
  6. 用草做成的。 例：草蓆、草繩、草房

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

How 草 was written 字形演變

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