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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

設

shè
to put; to place; to lay
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 7
  • radical 言
  • 11 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *hljed): semantic 言 + phonetic 埶 (OC *ŋeds). 埶 (yì) in this character initially appears as an ancient short form ⿰𡉣攴 (Jiang, 2019).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese言 “to say; to speak; to talk”
  • soundChinese埶

Words built on it: 建設

Meanings

character
  1. to put; to place; to lay
  2. to arrange for; to help settle down; to find a place for
  3. to found; to set up; to establish
  4. to plan and prepare
  5. to assume; to suppose; to presume
  6. if; in case; supposing

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

設：施陳也。从言从殳。殳，使人也。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 安置、陳列。 例：設宴、擺設
  2. 建立、制訂。 例：設制、設官分治
  3. 籌劃。 例：設法、設計
  4. 假若、假想。 例：設Ａ＞Ｂ，且Ｂ＞Ｃ，則Ａ＞Ｃ。

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

How 設 was written 字形演變

  1. 設 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 設 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 設