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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

血

xiě
blood
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 血
  • 6 strokes

Etymology graph

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

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 一 (“drop of blood”) + 皿 (“container”) - a drop of blood inside a chalice for sacrificial uses. In the oracle bone script, the character was used to refer to killing animals to obtain blood to sacrifice to ancestors:

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-hjwəj-t (“blood”) (STEDT; Schuessler, 2007).

Baxter and Sagart (2014) reconstruct the Old Chinese as *m̥ˤik to account for word-family connections with 脈 (OC *C.mˤ[i]k, “vein”), 衊 (OC *mˤi[k], “defiled blood”) as well as its use as a phonetic component in 侐 (OC *m̥(r)ik, “still; quiet”), which is in the same word family as 宓 (OC *mi[k], “quiet; silent”) (Sagart, 1999b; Baxter and Sagart, 2017). Sagart (1999b) argues that this word is not genetically related to the Tibeto-Burman form with *s-hjw-, but that this word has been borrowed into Tibeto-Burman.

Schuessler (2019) critiques Sagart (1999b)'s proposal that Tibeto-Burman languages all over Southeast Asia and the Himalayas in early dynastic time would and could borrow Chinese words, and Baxter and Sagart (2014)'s reconstruction 血 (OC *m̥ˤik) as resulting from "phonetic over-interpretation of graphs" and confusing etymological link with mental association between "blood" and "vein".

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*s-hjwəj-t “blood”
  • ideaChinese一 “one”
  • ideaChinese皿 “dish; vessel”

Meanings

character
  1. blood
  2. blood relations; kinship
  3. firm; unyielding; ardent
  4. tears
  5. HP
  6. very

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

血:祭所薦牲血也。从皿,一象血形。凡血之屬皆从血。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 高等動物體內脈管所含的紅色液體。從心臟流出,循環全身,有分配養分、輸送廢物的新陳代謝功能。 例:輸血、捐血
  2. 有血緣關係的。 例:血統、血親
  3. 赤誠、熱烈。 例:血性男兒

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

How 血 was written 字形演變

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