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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

護

hù
to protect; to safeguard; to defend; to shelter
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 7
  • radical 言
  • 21 strokes

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  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɢʷraːɡs): semantic 言 + phonetic 蒦.

Likely cognate with Tibetan འགོགས་པ ('gogs pa, “to prevent; to avert; to repel”) (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese言 “to say; to speak; to talk”
  • soundChinese蒦 “to catch; to capture (a bird)”
    • ideaChinese雈 “type of owl”
    • ideaChinese又 “again; once more”

Related: Tibetan འགོགས་པ

Words built on it: 保護

Meanings

character
  1. to protect; to safeguard; to defend; to shelter
  2. to side with (someone); to take sides; to discriminate in favor of; to show prejudice (to a particular party)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

護：救視也。从言蒦聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 保衛。 例：保護、防護、護送
  2. 包庇、掩蔽。 例：袒護、庇護、護短

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

How 護 was written 字形演變

  1. 護 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 護 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: 護