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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

藥

yào
medicine; drug; pharmaceutical
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 艸
  • 19 strokes
  • 葯

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *lawɢ): semantic 艹 (“grass”) + phonetic 樂 (OC *ŋraːwɢs, *raːwɢ, *ŋraːwɢ).

According to Schuessler (2007), either:

* related to Mizo hlo (“a weed, drug, medicine”), or

* cognate to 療 (OC *rews, “to treat, to cure”), thus beloning to the same word family as 瀹 (OC *lowɢ), 爍 (OC *qʰljawɢ).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese艸 “grass”
  • soundChinese樂 “music; tune; melody; song”
    • ideaChinese絲 “silk (fibre, cloth, fabrics, etc.)”
      • ideaChinese糸 “thin silk”
    • ideaChinese木 “tree; woody plant”

Related: Mizo hlo

Meanings

character
  1. medicine; drug; pharmaceutical
  2. substance used for a particular purpose (e.g. poisoning, fermenting, explosion)
  3. to treat; to cure
  4. to poison
  5. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

藥：治病艸。从艸樂聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 用來治病的物質。 例：中藥、西藥、草藥
  2. 某些能發生特定效用的化學物質。 例：火藥、炸藥
  3. 治療。 例：無可救藥
  4. 用毒藥殺死。 例：藥老鼠

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

How 藥 was written 字形演變

  1. 藥 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 藥 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 藥 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 藥 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: 藥