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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

衣

yī
garment; clothes; clothing (Classifier: 件)
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 衣
  • 6 strokes

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Origin

Pictogram (象形) Outline of the chest, upper clothing. Compare to the upper part of 文.

This pictogram 衣 can be split into two parts and hold another component (e.g., 裹, 衮, 褱, 襄, and 𧝑 as used in 㞡 > 展). See also the top component of 雜.

Traditionally derived from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *w(y)a-t ~ wit (“to wear; to clothe”), whence Burmese ဝတ် (wat, “to wear”) (Schuessler, 2007), though the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction makes this phonetically suspect.

Pronunciation 2 ("to wear") is the exoactive form of pronunciation 1 ("garment; clothes") formed with the Old Chinese suffix *-s.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese丶 “An ancient punctuation mark.”
  • partChinese一 “one”
  • partChinese

Words built on it: 裡, 被, 衣服, 表, 裝, 製, 初, 複, 大衣, 補, 上衣, 袋

Meanings

character
  1. garment; clothes; clothing (Classifier: 件)
  2. coating; covering; skin
  3. lichen; bryophytes
  4. membrane; film
  5. afterbirth; placenta
  6. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

衣：依也。上曰衣，下曰裳。象覆二人之形。凡衣之屬皆从衣。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 穿上、包裹、覆蓋。 例：衣錦還鄉、衣錦榮歸

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

How 衣 was written 字形演變

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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 衣