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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

薄

bó
thin (not thick); flimsy
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 艸
  • 17 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
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  • meaning component
  • sound component
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *baːɡ): semantic 艹 + phonetic 溥 (OC *pʰaːʔ, *paːɡ).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ba (“thin; flat”) (STEDT). Cognate with Burmese ပါး (pa:, “thin”), Jingpho pha (pha³¹, “thin”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*ba “thin; flat”
  • meaningChinese艸 “grass”
  • soundChinese溥 “big; great; vast; wide”
    • meaningChinese水 “water (Classifier: 瓶 m; 樽 c; 滴 m c; 池 m c; 盆 m c; 杯 m c)”
    • soundChinese尃 “distribute”

Related: Burmese ပါး, Jingpho pha

Meanings

character
  1. thin (not thick); flimsy
  2. slight; meagre; small
  3. poor; infertile
  4. cold in manner; indifferent
  5. ungenerous; unkind; mean
  6. weak; light; not strong

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

薄：林薄也。一曰蠶薄。从艸溥聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. →薄荷

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

How 薄 was written 字形演變

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