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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

行屍走肉

/ɕiŋ³⁵ ʂɻ̩⁵⁵ t͡soʊ̯²¹⁴⁻²¹ ɻoʊ̯⁵¹/
walking corpse; walking dead; zombie
  • 行尸走肉
  • 走肉行屍
  • 行尸走肉
  • 走肉行尸
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Etymology graph

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The phrase describes a person moving without spirit, much like a lifeless body wandering through an empty world.
The phrase describes a person moving without spirit, much like a lifeless body wandering through an empty world.

Origin

The phrase 行屍走肉 is formed from four characters. The character 行 means to walk and contains the components 彳, meaning to walk slowly, and 亍, meaning to stop or stand still. The character 屍 means corpse or carcass; it features the semantic component 死, meaning to die, and the phonetic component 尸, representing a living person who represents a dead person during a rite. The character 死 itself contains the semantic component 歹, meaning bone remnants, and the phonetic component 尸.

The remaining characters are 走, meaning to go, to walk, or to go on foot, and 肉, meaning meat or flesh.

Confidence: high · written by gemma4:26b, checked statement-by-statement against the sources below.

此詞由「行」、「屍」、「走」、「肉」四個字組成。「行」字包含「彳」（意指緩慢行走）與「亍」（意指停止或站立）兩個部分。「屍」字則是結合了表示「死亡」的意符「死」與表示音符的「尸」；其中「死」字本身包含表示「骨骸殘餘」的意符「歹」，以及與「尸」相同的音符「尸」。

在結構上，「走」字代表行走或徒步前進，「肉」字則代表肉或肉體。透過這些組成元素，該詞彙構建出行走著的屍骸與肉身之意。

Confidence: high · written by gemma4:26b, checked statement-by-statement against the sources below.

Lineage

  • characterChinese行 “to walk”
    • componentChinese彳 “to walk slowly”
    • componentChinese亍 “to stop; to stand still”
  • characterChinese屍 “corpse; carcass (Classifier: 具 m; 條／条 c)”
    • soundChinese尸 “a living person who represents the dead person during a rite”
    • meaningChinese死 “to die”
      • meaningChinese歹 “bone remnants”
  • characterChinese走 “to go; to walk; to go on foot”
  • characterChinese肉 “meat; flesh”
Wiktionary etymology text

No etymology text yet. The graph shows what is known from the sources.

Meanings

phrase
  1. walking corpse; walking dead; zombie
  2. layabout; idler; person who lives only on the material level

Sources

  • etymagent (local gemma4:26b) — Generated
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0