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

衝

/ʈ͡ʂʰʊŋ⁵⁵/

to go straight ahead; to rush; to charge; to dash

Phono-semantic compound 形聲
HSK 6
TOCFL 6
radical 行
15 strokes
凌

Etymology graph

inherited
borrowed
derived
parts
meaning component
sound component
related

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *tʰjoŋ): semantic 行 + phonetic 重 (OC *doŋ, *doŋʔ, *doŋs).

Compare 撞 (OC *rdoːŋ, *rdoːŋs, “to strike”), Burmese ထောင်း (htaung:, “to pound”) (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

meaningChinese行 “to walk”
- componentChinese彳 “to walk slowly”
- componentChinese亍 “to stop; to stand still”
soundChinese重 “heavy”
- meaningChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
- soundChinese東 “east”

Related: Burmese ထောင်း

Meanings

character

to go straight ahead; to rush; to charge; to dash
to clash; to collide
thoroughfare; important place

國語辭典 definitions

向、對。例：別衝著人傻笑！
濃烈、激烈、猛烈。例：這煙味太衝，令人非常不舒服。

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

How 衝 was written 字形演變

Small seal
說文小篆
Shuowen, c. 100 CE
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
Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
Wiktionary: 衝